3-LockBox
10-30-2007, 12:16 PM
Prolly the best thing this guy ever did was introduce the world to Dolly Parton and inspire her to write and sing "I Will Always Love You" (yeah, the same song Whitney Houston oversang).
He was very popular for a guy who's greatest success was his duets with Dolly. He had some moderate hit songs, but the man couldn't carry a tune in a sack. But he was flambouyant and personable, wearing suits with sequenced wagon wheels all over it (get it, cuz his last name...right). If I sound jaded, its because I had to grow up in a family whose parents loved country music and watched every country-western themed TV show. Porter Wagoner was a syndicated country institution in the '60s and early 70s, where he sang, had guests, and featured the stupifyingly buxom Parton (he wasn't stupid). He also featured a slew of comic 'talents' and hokey, wince inducing skits that made Hee-Haw look like Saturday Night Live in comparison.:crazy:
Be that as it may, Wagoner was a TV pioneer, being the first major CW recording entity to embrace the (relatively) new medium, in a very isolated genre relunctant to change. Dolly Parton may very well been a star anyway, but she was an instant success, being really the first country super star to come straight from TV and not the Grand Ol Opry, and that is a debt she owed to Porter, as resistant as he was to let her go (don't worry, she repayed him - he sued her in the early '80s). It was prolly the success of Wagoner's TV show that allowed shows like Hee-Haw to exist...:nonod: well, happy trails anyway.
He was very popular for a guy who's greatest success was his duets with Dolly. He had some moderate hit songs, but the man couldn't carry a tune in a sack. But he was flambouyant and personable, wearing suits with sequenced wagon wheels all over it (get it, cuz his last name...right). If I sound jaded, its because I had to grow up in a family whose parents loved country music and watched every country-western themed TV show. Porter Wagoner was a syndicated country institution in the '60s and early 70s, where he sang, had guests, and featured the stupifyingly buxom Parton (he wasn't stupid). He also featured a slew of comic 'talents' and hokey, wince inducing skits that made Hee-Haw look like Saturday Night Live in comparison.:crazy:
Be that as it may, Wagoner was a TV pioneer, being the first major CW recording entity to embrace the (relatively) new medium, in a very isolated genre relunctant to change. Dolly Parton may very well been a star anyway, but she was an instant success, being really the first country super star to come straight from TV and not the Grand Ol Opry, and that is a debt she owed to Porter, as resistant as he was to let her go (don't worry, she repayed him - he sued her in the early '80s). It was prolly the success of Wagoner's TV show that allowed shows like Hee-Haw to exist...:nonod: well, happy trails anyway.