My tribute to Porter Wagoner, from this week’s Independent:
He Just Came To Smell The Flowers
Dolly Parton is said to have joked about her break from duet partner and mentor Porter Wagoner: “we split over creative differences—I was creative, he was different.” As with all things Parton, there’s more substance here than meets the eye. Wagoner truly was different, and that was always what made him special. The man who introduced one of the great female country personalities to the world had a storied and singular career of his own that continued to flourish until his death last Sunday at the age of 80.
More than any other country star of his stature, Wagoner transcended superficial stylistic boundaries and labels. He was a fixture at country music’s most hallowed institution, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, yet he was an Outlaw before Waylon and Willie—before the term even existed. He wore extravagant rhinestone Nudie suits well ahead of Gram Parsons, and though he sang with one of country’s great crossover stars, his idiosyncratic style was such that Waylon once opined: “He couldn’t go pop with a mouthful of firecrackers.”
Because he was never a man of his time he was never out of fashion, and at no point did the generational chasm between him and contemporary country music render him a nostalgia act. In his last years he recorded Wagonmaster, a powerful comeback album for Anti Records, opened for the White Stripes at Madison Square Garden, secured his own entry in The Rock Snob’s Dictionary, and even submitted to an interview with Borat before the latter hit the big screen.
Most remarkable of all, though, is that this man who traveled so far from home never lost sight of it. Seeing him perform a two-song set at the Opry on a Friday night this August rekindled my hope that the future of country of music could be reconciled with its past. He did it with such ease that I wonder if it wasn’t the last thing on his mind.
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