79 year old Porter Wagoner has a fine new album, Wagonmaster. It's
produced by Marty Stuart, an excellent new addition to Porter Wagoner's
illustrious catalog. Frankly, my expectations for him this late in the game were
pretty low, but this is actually surprisingly enough an outstanding record.
I've been listening to it for a month. It started out good with me, and
has only gotten better with repeated listening.
I've got at least four or five
favorites here, but I might start with "Satan's River," the closing track.
For starters, this moralistic country waltz may be the most purely catchy tune
on the album. A lot of these songs have good visual images in the lyrics,
and I especially like the "big yachts sailing on the warm smooth tide."
I've found myself repeatedly singing this song acapella walking the hills or
doing dishes and such.
I also have to give a good shout out to "Be a Little
Quieter." This opening track is a good vintage style Porter jam, with ever
lovin' Buck Trent and the boys dressing this up with good old fashioned fiddle
and steel and basic honky-tonk country rhythm. Then there's poor bedeviled
Porter himself, still hearing the long gone ex rattling the pots and pans in his
imagination.
Most
of these songs are quite good, and Porter wrote or co-wrote all but three of the
songs, and a couple of instrumental bits credited to Stuart. Also, he
performs a couple of Hank Williams songs in the extended bonus track chatting
with Stuart. I've been a bit bedeviled figuring out just when he
wrote some of these, though. "Albert Erving" is a haunting song about a
lonely old man he knew in childhood. From his description of having
written a song about him 25 years later, that would seem to make it a 40 year
old song. "My Many Hurried Southern Trips" was co-written with Dolly
Parton somewhere in the 1970s. This song details a bus driver's
observations of people in trouble, most strikingly an unwed pregnant woman.
Then again though, the details of when these songs were written aren't really
that important. I'm a pretty fair Porter fan, and I'd never heard any of
these songs. Presumably that Dolly song was recorded and buried on an
album in their vast back catalogs. They're new to me though, so they'll
likely be new songs to you as well.
One of several centerpieces is "Committed to Parkview." Johnny Cash
wrote this song some 25 years ago on learning that he and Porter had both spent
time in the same Nashville nuthouse. Cash apparently recorded it with the
Highwaymen, but this is Porter's first recording. It's decent as a melody,
but it's particularly striking as a lyric, with the catalogue of the torments of
the doomed.
Johnny was a legendarily wild character, whereas Porter Wagoner on the other
hand was seen more as the glad handing MC with the corny vaudevillian TV show
and the infamous gaudy studded nudie suits. However, in retrospect Porter
clearly seems the more disturbed. Johnny might get locked up for being too
wild, but Porter's the one who sounded like he was really out of his tree.
"The Rubber Room" is the obvious example for that, but you could find a number
of other recordings that are right out there. Check out "The First Mrs
Jones" for another prime example of psycho Porter.
This recording particularly
interests me as a point of comparison between Porter and Johnny.
"Committed to Parkview" sounds distinctly like Porter rather than Johnny.
I'm sure that Johnny could sell this good song, but there's a special twist of
demented despair that's pure Porter. There's no way Johnny Cash could have
spun this kind of psycho as effectively as Porter Wagoner.
To say one somewhat
bad thing about the album, Porter's voice has deteriorated with age - but even
that's not entirely a bad thing. He can still pretty effectively carry a
tune, and the age and dryness in his voice seem to be a distinct advantage with
some of this material. That effect certainly helps sell the hopeless,
helpless despair of the Parkview song.
It is also helpful with "Brother Harold
Dee." This is one of those old fashioned recitation numbers, a classic
Porter Wagoner specialty. He's really good with these dramatic little
morality plays, and this story of a freaky long haired son rejected by his
upstanding middle class family is an excellent example. This kind of thing
just naturally sounds more credible from an old man's mouth.
There's maybe just one place, though, where age works distinctly against him
as a performer. "Hotwired" was written by Shawn Camp, with whose work I'm
not otherwise familiar. This may be the best one song on the album.
I might describe it as rockabilly, though that might be more a general spiritual
comparison rather than a specific musical style. In any case, it's an
outstanding song working from a particularly good metaphor about an electrifying
gal who just can't seem to stop hotwiring everything in site - including the
narrator's heart, naturally. It's an outstanding song and a perfectly good
arrangement, but there's just no way 79 year old Porter can vocally do justice
to the electrical sexual sentiments of the song. I'd really like to hear
the Kings of Leon take a swing at this. The purveyors of "Holy Roller
Novacaine" could really sell this bad boy.
Overall, this is an excellent
album. Now, if you don't have any Porter Wagoner records - well, first of
all you're missing out. You should hunt down a hits album first before
this, naturally. But after that, and if you're any kind of Porter fan, you
definitely should hear this fine album.
Most
of these songs are quite good, and Porter wrote or co-wrote all but three of the
songs, and a couple of instrumental bits credited to Stuart. Also, he
performs a couple of Hank Williams songs in the extended bonus track chatting
with Stuart. I've been a bit bedeviled figuring out just when he
wrote some of these, though. "Albert Erving" is a haunting song about a
lonely old man he knew in childhood. From his description of having
written a song about him 25 years later, that would seem to make it a 40 year
old song. "My Many Hurried Southern Trips" was co-written with Dolly
Parton somewhere in the 1970s. This song details a bus driver's
observations of people in trouble, most strikingly an unwed pregnant woman.
One of several centerpieces is "Committed to Parkview." Johnny Cash
wrote this song some 25 years ago on learning that he and Porter had both spent
time in the same Nashville nuthouse. Cash apparently recorded it with the
Highwaymen, but this is Porter's first recording. It's decent as a melody,
but it's particularly striking as a lyric, with the catalogue of the torments of
the doomed.