Short text: By PETER COOPER - TENNESSEAN.COM
Text: Country Hall of Famer Porter Wagoner dies at 80
By PETER COOPER
Staff Writer
For 50 years, Porter Wagoner starred on the Grand Ole Opry, wearing
otherworldly suits and singing about salt-of-the-earth concerns.
The Country Music Hall of Famer died at age 80 tonight, as dignitaries
and stars gathered at the Country Music Hall of Fame to induct its three newest
members. Mr. Wagoner was admitted to the hospital on Monday, Oct. 15 and had
been under doctors' care since then. Mr. Wagoner was released to hospice care
on Friday, days after the announcement of a lung cancer diagnosis.
Known as "The Thin Man From West Plains," Mr. Wagoner's contributions to
country music are manifold and consequential. Marty Stuart, who produced
this year's much-heralded comeback album Wagonmaster, calls him "an American
master and a cornerstone of our music."
A hit-maker for more than a quarter-century, he was a Country Music Hall
of Famer and a three-time Grammy winner whose best-loved singles included
"A Satisfied Mind," "Misery Loves Company" and "Green, Green Grass of Home."
His syndicated television show allowed him to serve as an ambassador for
the genre, and it proved invaluable in spreading the fame of Wagoner's
hand-picked
"girl singer," Dolly Parton, with whom he had hit duets including "Just Someone
I Used To Know" and "Making Plans."
In the studio, he was an innovator who tweaked traditional country
arrangements and found fresh sounds in a genre that often tugs against change.
He was among the pioneers of the country "concept album," releasing
song-sets such as "What Ain't To Be Just Might Happen" and "The Cold, Hard Facts
of Life" that offered unified themes. As a performer and producer, he sought
the beauty of harmony and the reality of dissonance.
He was a tenacious song-scavenger, listening to outside material even
during down-time at the Opry in this new millennium, hoping to find hit songs
and new ideas. And in the wake of Minnie Pearl's 1996 death, Mr. Wagoner and
Jimmy Dickens became the public faces of the Grand Ole Opry.
Oh, yes, and there were the suits. Mr. Wagoner wasn't the first to wear a
rhinestone suit on the Opry - Dickens has that designation - but he was
certainly a famed and ardent devotee of the power of garb.
Backstage in his dressing room, the suits were so heavy that they were
hard to hoist with one hand. They must have been hot, and burdensome to wear.
But under the lights, on the grand stage, they sparkled and dazzled. Opry
patrons would always applaud at the first sight of Wagoner, cheering him as a
vision and as a visionary as he welcomed them to the show, professed his
pleasure to be there and told a joke or two.
Clothes didn't make the man, but they accentuated him, and Mr. Wagoner's
stage outfits could be read like rhinestone novels, with glittering wagon
wheels and other symbols that told stories of the songs and life of this
farmer's son from Missouri.
EARLY LIFE
Mr. Wagoner was born in the Ozark Mountains in 1927. His early childhood
was marked by the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the Wagoners worked
to keep their farm alive during a decade in which 18,000 farms foreclosed in
the Show Me State.
His older brother, Glenn Lee, taught him to play the guitar, and music
became a balm for the hard times.
Young Mr. Wagoner attended a one-room schoolhouse with no heat or water,
and in the afternoon the teenager would commandeer an oak tree stump on
his family's property, pretend the stump was the Grand Ole Opry stage and
pretend he was introducing Roy Acuff, the King of the Hillbillies. Then he'd
leap off the stump, get back on it from the other side and pretend he WAS
Acuff, singing "Wabash Cannonball."
A neighbor once caught this pre-rhinestone act and told the boy, "You'll
still be plowing these mules when you're 65."
(Mr. Wagoner turned 65 in August of 1992, without a mule in sight.)
In 1942, brother Glenn Lee died. Mr. Wagoner quit school a few months
later, and the farm was soon sold to pay off family debts. Mr. Wagoner worked
in a service station, as a butcher and as a truck driver. He also began
performing on West Plains radio station KWPM, becoming popular enough to
encourage
his dream of being a professional singer.
His first break came in 1951 when KWTO in Springfield, Mo., hired him for
a show that later became the famous Ozark Jubilee. In 1952, he recorded
for RCA Victor, and one year later Carl Smith had a No. 2 country hit with
Wagoner's "Trademark." Two years later, Wagoner had a Top 10 hit of his own
with "Company's Comin', and in 1955 he went to No. 1 with "A Satisfied Mind."
Less than two years later, he moved to Nashville and joined the Opry.
'Appointment television'
In 1960, Mr. Wagoner launched The Porter Wagoner Show, a program that
brought country and gospel music into millions of homes. That show became
appointment
viewing for plenty of people.
"It was the only time of the week I had with my daddy," Stuart said.
"We'd see Porter in black and white on television, and then I got to see him
in living color, with the suit on, on the Opry."
Mr. Wagoner's television program featured plenty of striking musicians.
Buck Trent played an electric banjo that sounded like a steel guitar. Fiddler
Mack Magaha was a deft instrumentalist and performer, Speck Rhodes provided
comedy, and the singer known as "Pretty Miss Norma Jean" stole hearts and shared
duets.
In 1967, Norma Jean left the show, and Wagoner chose an East Tennessee
native named Dolly Parton as a replacement. Audiences were at first resistant
to Parton, who had a high voice and who tended to talk faster than most
Southern ladies, but they warmed to her in part because of the lovely duets she
recorded with Mr. Wagoner. Those recordings, coupled with the exposure of the
television show, helped launch Parton to her eventual superstar-level success.
The television program reached plenty of viewers who were previously
unfamiliar with country music. Two of those viewers were Jerry Garcia of the
Grateful Dead and Robert Hunter, who served as the Dead's primary lyricist.
"We (the Dead) were getting off of that psychedelic run that we were on,"
said Hunter, who watched the show each week with Garcia in Northern California.
"We had evolved from bluegrass and old-timey bands, but what we didn't know was
country & western, or whatever it was that Dolly and Porter were doing.
So a little bit of Nashville moved into the Bay Area, and it was like nothing
I'd ever seen."
Hunter eventually made his way backstage at the Opry, where he told that
story to Mr. Wagoner, who smiled and said, "Well, I never did hear nothing
by that Grateful Dead that I didn't like."
In 1972, Mr. Wagoner tried his own bit of psychedelia with the What Ain't
To Be, Just Might Happen album. That one included "Rubber Room," a song
that found him singing "Doom, doom, doom, zoom, room tomb . rubber room" amid
waves of reverb.
"People thought I was crazy, man," Mr. Wagoner said in 2000. "I mean,
actually crazy. They thought I'd lost my mind."
He hadn't lost his mind, though. He was just trying something new, again.
It was the same thing he'd done when he used those tight, trio harmonies
on "A Satisfied Mind" in 1955, and when he used a spacey, tremolo effect on
"Heartbreak Affair" in 1960.
"Every now and then, you've got to rattle the cage a little," Mr. Wagoner
told The Tennessean.
In 1974, after recording 14 Top 10 hits, winning a Grammy and three
Country Music Association duo of the year awards with Mr. Wagoner, Parton split
with him. Though Parton wrote the gentle "I Will Always Love You" about a
breakup that was both personal and professional, the parting turned contentious.
In 1978, Mr. Wagoner told The Tennessean he could never trust Parton again.
Later, though, the two reunited for performances and they rekindled their
friendship.
This year, on a show that celebrated his 50th year on the Opry, Mr. Wagoner
introduced Parton as "One of my best friends today," and he wept onstage as
Parton sand "I Will Always Love You," looking right at him.
Mr. Wagoner did not record any country hits after 1983, and talks of a
comeback album were halted after he nearly died from an aneurysm in 2006.
But he slowly returned to good health, and he and Stuart set about making an
album that highlighted his talents. Wagonmaster was released to rave reviews,
Mr. Wagoner's legacy was reevaluated by The New York Times, No Depression
magazine and other publications, and Mr. Wagoner wound up opening for rock band
The White Stripes at Madison Square Garden.
"I'm just so grateful, and feel so good about the fact that God let me
live through that aneurysm," Mr. Wagoner said earlier this year. "I guess
I think he had some other things that he wanted me to do."
Mr. Wagoner's death was announced tonight by a publicist for the Grand
Ole Opry. Mr Wagoner - who was honored on May 19 for his 50 years as an Opry
member- died at 8:25 p.m. at Alive Hospice in Nashville.
"The Grand Ole Opry family is deeply saddened by the news of the passing
of our dear friend, Porter Wagoner. His passion for the Opry and all of
country music was truly immeasurable. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his
family at this difficult time," says Pete Fisher, vice-president and general
manager of The Grand Ole Opry.
Mr. Wagoner is survived by three children, Richard, Debra and Denise.
Visitation and funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time.
Kay
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