Porter Wagoner

Porter Wayne Wagoner was born on 12 August 1927 in Howell County, Missouri, the son of a farmer, and the family moved to West Plains. He formed a band, the Blue Ridge Boys, and by 1950 he was singing over the local station KWPM from the butcher shop where he cut meat. In 1951 Si Siman hired him to perform on KWTO in Springfield, Missouri, and that led to an RCA Victor contract. His first RCA session, on 9 September 1952 at the KWTO studio with Steve Sholes producing, produced “Settin’ the Woods on Fire” and three other sides, backed by Speedy Haworth and George Rhodes on guitars, Claude Jackson on steel and Buster Fellers on fiddle.

The early records sold poorly, so he worked the schoolhouse circuit for the gate as the Porter Wagoner Trio, with Don Warden on steel guitar and Haworth on rhythm guitar. “Trademark,” which he wrote with Gary Walker, went to number two for Carl Smith in 1953. His own breakthrough came from two KWTO sessions in 1954 that Siman and Wagoner produced: “Company’s Comin’,” cut that spring or summer, reached number seven, and “A Satisfied Mind,” recorded on 11 September 1954 with Haworth and Warden, went to number one in 1955. He was a regular on ABC television’s Ozark Jubilee in 1955 and 1956, moved to Nashville in 1956 and joined the Grand Ole Opry the next year.

In 1960 the Chattanooga Medicine Company invited him to front a syndicated television show. The Porter Wagoner Show ran for two decades and 686 half-hour episodes, ending in 1981, and at its peak it reached about a hundred markets and more than three million viewers. The cast included the comedian Speck Rhodes and the singer Norma Jean, and his band, the Wagonmasters, came to include Mack Magaha on fiddle, George McCormick on rhythm guitar and Buck Trent on banjo, with Don Warden on steel. Guests ranged from Tex Ritter and Cowboy Copas to newcomers such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, and most episodes closed with a gospel number. Through the 1960s his RCA hits included “Misery Loves Company” (number one, 1962), “Sorrow on the Rocks” (1964), “Green, Green Grass of Home” (number four, 1965), “Skid Row Joe” (1965–66), “The Cold Hard Facts of Life” (number two, 1967) and “The Carroll County Accident” (number two, 1968–69). He also won three Grammy awards for sacred recordings made with the Blackwood Brothers, in 1966, 1967 and 1969.

His records stayed close to rural material. “Your Old Love Letters,” cut on 23 November 1960 with Chet Atkins producing, had Harold Morrison on banjo. The February 1963 sessions for Y’All Come included “Crying My Heart Out Over You” and “Angel Band.” In July 1964 he recorded The Blue Grass Story (RCA Victor, December 1964), an album built largely on songs by Bill Monroe and by Monroe and Lester Flatt, among them “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Uncle Pen,” “Will You Be Lovin’ Another Man” and “Little Cabin Home on the Hill,” along with Jimmie Driftwood’s “Country Music Has Gone to Town.”

In 1967 Dolly Parton replaced Norma Jean on the show, and the two began recording duets. Their hits, beginning with Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind” (1967), included fourteen in the Top Ten, among them “Just Someone I Used to Know” and their only number one, “Please Don’t Stop Loving Me” (1974). Wagoner was their de facto producer and arranger on thirteen duet albums, and he also supervised Parton’s solo records for RCA in those years. Her departure from the show in 1974 led to angry words and legal action, and her song “I Will Always Love You,” written about the parting, went to number one that year. The two later settled their differences, and their duet “Making Plans” reached number two as late as 1980.

After Parton left he kept experimenting. He brought James Brown to the Grand Ole Opry, produced rhythm-and-blues sessions for Joe Simon, appeared in Clint Eastwood’s film Honkytonk Man (1982) and in the mid-1980s toured with an all-woman band, the Right Combination. From 1992 he co-hosted the Nashville Network’s Opry Backstage for nearly a decade, and after Roy Acuff’s death in November 1992 he became the Opry’s unofficial spokesman. Parton inducted him into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002. In the 2000s he recorded for Shell Point and then TeeVee, including country gospel sessions with Pam Gadd that took in “Model Church,” “Rank Strangers” and “Life Rides the Train.”

His last album, Wagonmaster, produced by Marty Stuart for the Anti- label, came out on 5 June 2007. On it he was backed by Stuart, Kenny Vaughan, Stuart Duncan on guitar and fiddle, his old banjo player Buck Trent and Harry Stinson on drums, and it briefly reached the country chart. That July he opened for the White Stripes at Madison Square Garden, and in 2007 the Opry marked his fifty years of membership. He died in Nashville on 28 October 2007.