ten billion butterfly sneezes

Porter Wagoner, legendary country singer who never donned a rhinestone suit that didn’t become him, has passed away at age 80.

My first recollection of him is watching his TV show, which started in 1960, and ran for 21 years. I watched at my grandparents’ house when we were there visiting, early in the show’s run. At my age then, I thought my Granddad and Grandma were hopelessly out of touch, and I couldn’t wait until the show was over. As I got older, and hopefully a little wiser, I grew to appreciate the show, and to enjoy both Porter’s suits and his music. Porter had this to say about the show:

“Some shows are mechanical, but ours was not polished and slick,” he said in 1982.

Even when I wasn’t the biggest fan of the show, it for sure wasn’t mechanical. I later came to appreciate that if you have good songs, performed well, that’s about all you need.

Porter’s record deal was with RCA; as all contracts go, his came to an end, and I hadn’t seen nor heard about him for a good long time. As he said about record labels:

“I stopped making records because I didn’t like the way they were wanting me to record,” he said. “When RCA dropped me from the label, I didn’t really care about making records for another label because I didn’t have any say in what they would release and how they would make the records and so forth.”

Amen. But earlier this year, he signed with ANTI-records, a label featuring primarily alt.rock acts. I don’t know much of anything about alt.rock, I just know that if you want real country music today, it likely carries the label alt.country. His deal with ANTI lead to what would be his final album:

Wagoner’s final album, “Wagonmaster,” was released in June and earned him some of the best reviews of his career. Over the summer, he was the opening act for the influential rock duo White Stripes at a sold-out show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“The young people I met backstage, some of them were 20 years old. They wanted to get my autograph and tell me they really liked me,” Porter said with tears in his eyes the day after the New York show. “If only they knew how that made me feel _ like a new breath of fresh air.”

Amen again.

Rest in Peace, Porter. Thanks for not compromising your music, and for being a class act’s class act.

-k-

tbbs tags: RIP, PorterWagoner, music

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