Album Review: Porter Wagoner – Wagonmaster

Porter Wagoner is one of the most versatile performers in the history of the country genre, and it would be easy to pass off Wagonmaster as a greatest hits album to the uninformed. The album is demarcated by a “Wagonmaster” melody that features producer Marty Stuart on vocals and a fiddle-driven melody whose similarly to the Grand Ole Opry theme is perhaps not coincidental. Together, they lend the album the feel of the television program that brought Wagoner his greatest fame and introduce a project that surveys the many stylistic choices of Porter’s career. “Brother Harold Dee” is as fine a recitation as Wagoner has ever recorded, and “Satan’s River” and “A Place to Hang My Hat” are reminiscent of his country gospel recordings.

However, it is the album material that is not as easily pigeonholed that truly shines. “My Many Hurried Southern Trips,” co-written by Wagoner and Dolly Parton, is a delightfully up-tempo portrait of the passengers on a southbound bus. “Be A Little Quieter” is the quintessential country ballad of a man haunted by memories of his ex and sports a remarkably singable hook, while “Hotwired” is a hilarious satire that sounds more like a Brad Paisley album cut than a recording by Mr. Grand Ole Opry.

The album is not perfect. Wagoner’s prolonged intro to “Albert Erving” sounds like one of his famous recitations until the singing begins, by which time Porter has already revealed the song’s hook and rendered the lyric uninteresting. Fans who desire thematically cohesive albums may be disappointed, as the record is more of a survey than a concept.

The quality of two tracks, however, dwarfs the album’s imperfections. “Committed to Parkview” is a haunting song written for Wagoner by Johnny Cash about their mutual experiences in a Nashville sanitarium that will doubtless draw comparisons to the material Cash recorded for his American Recordings albums. The cut is inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the album material and thus is difficult to listen to in the context of the project itself, but it stands tall on its own and should attract deserved attention to the release.

The album’s hidden track is the real treat, as Porter and Marty reminisce about Hank Williams’ first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry and Porter spontaneously recites “Men With Broken Hearts” and sings a timeless acoustic version of “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle.”

Porter and Marty had just begun Wagonmaster when Porter suffered a near-fatal abdominal aneurysm, and his resultant frail health plagued the recording of the album. Country music fans should be eternally thankful for Porter’s ability to produce this remarkable and lasting piece of work. One can only hope that it’s not his last studio album, but it would certainly provide a fitting send-off for a country legend.