Porter Wagoner - Wagonmaster
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CD Details
Artist: Porter WagonerBrand: WAGONER,PORTER
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-06-05
Music Label: ANTI
Soundtracks:
- Wagonmaster (part 1)
- Be A Little Quieter
- Who Knows Right From Wrong
- Albert Erving
- A Place To Hang My Hat
- Eleven Cent Cotton
- My Many Hurried Southern Trips
- Committed To Parkview
- The Agony Of Waiting
- Buck and The Boys
- A Fool Like Me
- The Late Love of Mine
- Hot Wired
- Brother Harold Dee
- Satan's River
- Wagonmaster Reprise
- Porter and Marty (Men WithBroken Hearts/I Heard ThatLonesome Whistle Blow)
Music reviews of Wagonmaster
Music Review: Porter's Best Yet!
Rating: 5 Stars
This album is one of the best he's done yet! Marty Stuart does an excellent job of producing this CD. My hats off to him in not trying to change what Porter is and was. One critic said all of the songs sound the same, but if you listen, it is Porter's style that shines through. Not all of the songs are the same; take for example Committed to Parkview. This is the kind of dark slow song Porter is known for, yet it contrasts sharply with the upbeat (but still dark themed) Albert Erving. Knowing the story behind that song, as introduced by Porter, makes it all the more delightful. It was good to hear also that Porter kept his voice right up until the end. The last album from some other elderly stars has been quite bad.
Description of Wagonmaster
In a world where the term is overused, Porter Wagoner is a true legend. He kicked out hard-hitting honky-tonk anthems in the 50s; pioneered music television with the amazingly long-running "Porter Wagoner Show" 1960-1980, where he discovered Dolly Parton; started the Nudie suit craze; influenced everyone from Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakam to the Byrds & Gram Parsons; and recorded seminal concept albums in the early 70s, populated with the lonely, addicted, and mentally ill, capturing the imagination of nascent punks like Alex Chilton with songs like "The Rubber Room." Last year, Marty Stuart, longtime Johnny Cash sideman and torchbearer of traditional country music, approached his longtime hero with a song Johnny Cash had written for Porter, called "Committed to Parkview." In the tradition of Porter's haunted ballads, "Committed to Parkview" is the first-person account of a tenant of Nashville's legendary sanitorium, listening in on the tormented cries of his fellow inmates. Porter and Marty decided to build an album, Wagonmaster, around the song, revisiting the classic feel of his chilling concept albums, interwoven with stomping barroom honkytonk that rides with the best of Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb. The results are magnificent, a record of raw beauty capturing a proud, ragged man looking back unflinchingly at his life. At 79, and celebrating his 50th anniversary at the Grand Ole Opry, Porter has never been more vibrant and relevant.One of the major problems with modern country revolves around the fact that--save George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Loretta Lynn--almost all the characters who poured the foundation for post-World War II hillbilly culture are dead or no longer recording. Which brings us to the miracle of Porter Wagoner's new album, Wagonmaster, produced by Marty Stuart. Wagoner, who kept his corn-yellow pompadour piled high, wide, and handsome, was as wild as Johnny Cash in his prime, but hid most of his sins behind his smooth, pitch-man persona. You can hear it in the music all along the way, though, particularly in the weird "Rubber Room" era of the '60s and '70s. Now nearly 80, Wagoner--the man who brought James Brown to the Grand Ole Opry--is still as theatrical and out-there as ever, even if his once-strong and well-modulated baritone has crumbled to a husk. Stuart, who loved Porter's old syndicated TV show, frames the album with an opening and close that recalls those halcyon days, a Mac Magaha-style fiddle dancing behind it all. In between, the thin man from West Plains, Missouri, moves through a riveting collection of Southern Gothic numbers, starting with "Be a Little Quieter," in which a man is so haunted by memories of his lover that he imagines her walking the halls, taking a bath, ratting the pots and pans. But that's kids' stuff compared to "Committed to Parkview," which Cash sent to Wagoner nearly 25 years ago on learning they'd both spent time in the Nashville mental hospital/drug treatment center. Wagoner opens his spoken-word introduction as if he's playing for laughs, but quickly turns poignant, and the bloodletting hardly lets up: Running through the album are a couple of Bible beaters ("Brother Harold Dee," "Satan's River"), a reprise of "My Many Hurried Southern Trips" (a song about a bus driver's slice-of-life that Wagoner wrote with former singing partner Dolly Parton), and an affecting word portrait of a man from Wagoner's childhood ("Albert Erving") who was so isolated and loveless that he conjured an imaginary companion. Wagoner takes time for a quickie instrumental tribute to his old banjo sidekick Buck Trent, but he's too mired in pathos to highlight the humor in Shawn Camp's "Hotwired." Yet who's to quibble? Much of this is wonderfully creepy ("The Late Love of Mine") and underscored with the kind of weepy pedal steel that fell out of favor when Nashville set its sights on crossover gold. Stuart, his own generation's premier hillbilly throwback, deserves kudos for getting this to the marketplace. And Wagoner, virtually forgotten after Dolly moved on, is to be revered for hanging in there when so many rhinestoned rednecks who put the "path" in Music City's patented brand of pathology chose to check out. --Alanna Nash
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