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August 10, 2012 2:00 PM Subscribe
It's the Porter Wagoner Show! Starring Porter Wagoner and the Wagonmasters with Speck Rhodes and Norma Jean
The Porter Wagoner Show, a syndicated country-music variety show, aired from 1960 to 1981 with 686 thirty-minute episodes produced.
Porter, with his trademark Nudie suits, performed on each program.
Chet Atkins Bobby Bare Carl Butler Bill Carlisle Skeeter Davis Guy Drake Rusty Draper Lester Flatt (with a 14 year old Marty Stuart) Lefty Frizzell Merle Haggard The Hinsons Waylon Jennings Jim & Jesse George Jones Wayne Kemp Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper Loretta Lynn Magaha & Trent Ronnie Milsap Willie Nelson Mark O'Connor (13 Year old fiddle grandmaster) Jack Palance (yes, that Jack Palance) Jerry Reed
The Porter Wagoner Show, a syndicated country-music variety show, aired from 1960 to 1981 with 686 thirty-minute episodes produced.
Porter, with his trademark Nudie suits, performed on each program.
- A Satisfied Mind
- Another Day Another Dollar
- Carol County Acccident
- Cold Hard Facts of Life
- Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Loud, Loud Music
- Green, green grass of home
- Happy Faces
- I Cried Again
- Long Journey Home
- Love Your Neighbor
- Men With Broken Hearts
- Misery Loves Company
- Rocky Top
- Settin' the Woods on Fire
- Skid Row Joe
- Sorrow on the Rocks
- Tennesee Stud
- Trouble in the Amen Corner
- Your Old Love Letters
- A Woman's Gotta Make A Stand
- Heartbreak U.S.A.
- I Don't Love You Anymore
- I Wouldn't Buy a Used Car From Him
- Little Bitty Tear
- Lonesome Number One
- Oh, Lonesome Me
- Triangle
- Unloved
- Walkin' Advertisement for the Blues
- Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do?
- A Letter From Heaven
- Bubblin' Over
- Chas
- Coat of Many Colors
- Crying Time
- Don't Let it Trouble Your Mind
- Early Morning Breeze
- Golden Streets of Glory
- Gypsy, Joe, and Me
- He's a Go Getter
- I Couldn't Wait Forever
- I Will Always Love You (not to be confused with I'll Oilwells Love You)
- I'm Doing This for Your Sake
- I'm Not Worth The Tears
- If I Kiss You Will You Go Away
- If We Never Meet Again
- Jolene
- Joshua
- Just Because I'm A Woman
- Love With Me
- Mama, Say a Special Prayer for Me
- Medley: Put It Off Untill Tomorrow, Your Ole' Handyman, I'm In No Condition
- Mule Skinner Blues
- My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy
- My Tennesee Mountain Home
- Somethin' Fishy
- The Bridge
- The Tender Touch of Love
- There's Always a First Time
- When I sing for Him
- Wish I Felt This Way at Home
- Your Ol' Handy Man
- Before I Met You
- Her and the Car and the Mobile Home Were Gone
- Holding on to Nothing
- Jeannie's Afraid of the Dark
- Just Someone I Used To Know
- Lost Forever In Your Kiss
- Malina
- Milwaukee, Here I Come
- Once More
- Run That By Me One More Time
- Satan's River
- That's When love Will Mean the Most
- The Pain of Loving You
- The Right Combination
- Together Always
- We Found It
- We'll Get Ahead Someday
- We're Holding on With Nothing Left to hold on to
- You Better Move it on Home
Chet Atkins Bobby Bare Carl Butler Bill Carlisle Skeeter Davis Guy Drake Rusty Draper Lester Flatt (with a 14 year old Marty Stuart) Lefty Frizzell Merle Haggard The Hinsons Waylon Jennings Jim & Jesse George Jones Wayne Kemp Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper Loretta Lynn Magaha & Trent Ronnie Milsap Willie Nelson Mark O'Connor (13 Year old fiddle grandmaster) Jack Palance (yes, that Jack Palance) Jerry Reed
- There's Better Things In Life (with Porter and Dolly)
- Wabash Cannonball
- hallelujah I love Her So
- Guitar Medley: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Yakkety Sax, Wildwood Flower, Wabash Cannonball, Eight More Miles to Louisville, Snowbird
- Chuck Berry Medley: Promised Land, Johnny B. Goode, School Days, Maybelline, Memphis
Wasn't Dolly just gorgeous? And that hair...
Thanks so much. This is amazing. I'll spend Sunday morning watching all these for sure.
posted by peacrow at 2:18 PM on August 10, 2012
Thanks so much. This is amazing. I'll spend Sunday morning watching all these for sure.
posted by peacrow at 2:18 PM on August 10, 2012
A round of applause! Cold hard facts of life for me lies squarely in the uncanny valley that country music sometimes inhabits. Skin crawlin'.
posted by stonepharisee at 2:18 PM on August 10, 2012
posted by stonepharisee at 2:18 PM on August 10, 2012
It's like Saturday night at my grandparents' house again!
posted by Thorzdad at 2:29 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 2:29 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
Oh, man. You don't need me to tell you how fabulous Dolly was and is, but I dearly, dearly love me some Norma Jean. Just the perfect amount of crack in her voice. "I Wouldn't Buy a Used Car From Him" is just perfect.
posted by Fnarf at 2:31 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Fnarf at 2:31 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
OMG I remember seeing this show probably in the 1960s when I was a little kid. And surely this is one of the primary reasons that I absolutely can't stand C&W.
But for Chet Atkins, I can put all that aside. I only came to appreciate Chet on account of his work with Les Paul.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:32 PM on August 10, 2012
But for Chet Atkins, I can put all that aside. I only came to appreciate Chet on account of his work with Les Paul.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:32 PM on August 10, 2012
I've always wanted to see some of these old Dolly performances - thanks!
posted by Sara C. at 2:40 PM on August 10, 2012
posted by Sara C. at 2:40 PM on August 10, 2012
It's like Saturday night as a kid in Franklin again!
posted by erniepan at 3:44 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by erniepan at 3:44 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
OMG, must go home and watch them all - I can still hear my sister trying to get me laughing doing her Dolly impression, going on about the rose on the back of one of the Nudie suits - 'Porter! Lookit them Flares!'
Thank you!
posted by pupdog at 4:02 PM on August 10, 2012
Thank you!
posted by pupdog at 4:02 PM on August 10, 2012
As a child of the '60s growing up in the mountains of North Carolina, watching this show was as much a part of Saturday night as getting my bath and picking out a dress to wear to (Baptist) Sunday School the next morning. Thanks for a trip down memory lane!
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 5:03 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 5:03 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
I saw a lot of these at my Gran's house while I was growing up, which in turn, helped inspire my MeFi handle....
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 5:36 PM on August 10, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 5:36 PM on August 10, 2012 [3 favorites]
My Dad always watched this show. For some reason those boots walking down the hallway seemed like nightmare fuel to me as a kid. Well, that and those suits.
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:27 PM on August 10, 2012
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:27 PM on August 10, 2012
It has just now, literally this minute, struck me that this show was the C&W answer to the Lawrence Welk show...
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:29 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:29 PM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
Spent a few summers in Abingdon Virginia @ my Grandparents farm. A budding a television addict back then, I would desperately watch just about anything that came on the tube, and the Porter Wagoner show fit the bill. Brings back memories!
posted by lotusstp at 7:30 PM on August 10, 2012
posted by lotusstp at 7:30 PM on August 10, 2012
Killing post, absolutely killing. Love ol' Porter to death, and this is the best compendium of iternet video resources one could hope for. Thanks so much!
A little bit of Porter previously. (I was thinking that I'd made an FPP exclusively devoted to Cold Hard Facts of Life, but it seems I hadn't after all...)
One thing I'd like to mention, though, a word to the wise, and I say it as someone who has, over and over again, gone back to many of the various music-related YouTube-intensive Mefi posts I've made over the last several years, only to find those clips deleted-deleied-deleted-no-longer-available-deleted-etc: if there are clips here that you'd like to see again, maybe a few months or a year or two down the line... DOWNLOAD 'EM NOW!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:37 PM on August 10, 2012 [2 favorites]
A little bit of Porter previously. (I was thinking that I'd made an FPP exclusively devoted to Cold Hard Facts of Life, but it seems I hadn't after all...)
One thing I'd like to mention, though, a word to the wise, and I say it as someone who has, over and over again, gone back to many of the various music-related YouTube-intensive Mefi posts I've made over the last several years, only to find those clips deleted-deleied-deleted-no-longer-available-deleted-etc: if there are clips here that you'd like to see again, maybe a few months or a year or two down the line... DOWNLOAD 'EM NOW!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:37 PM on August 10, 2012 [2 favorites]
..this show was the C&W answer to the Lawrence Welk show...
No, Welk was bigtime. Porter Wagoner was equivalent to local and regional music shows like the Leo Greco Show. There were tons of these local variety shows. That one happened to be C&W. The big show in my area was a mix of hillbilly and polka. Leo Greco was on the air for like 40 years and there is not not one single bit of his music online except this one song.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:44 PM on August 10, 2012 [2 favorites]
No, Welk was bigtime. Porter Wagoner was equivalent to local and regional music shows like the Leo Greco Show. There were tons of these local variety shows. That one happened to be C&W. The big show in my area was a mix of hillbilly and polka. Leo Greco was on the air for like 40 years and there is not not one single bit of his music online except this one song.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:44 PM on August 10, 2012 [2 favorites]
One of the things I always really liked about Porter was his no-bullshit demeanor and attitude onstage. In a business where so many other singers would flash a big ol' toothy SHOW-BIZ! country SMILE! between every line they sang, Porter maintained a completely anaffected, stoic (one could say often steely) gaze, straight into the camera, as he delivered his songs. Those eyes of his, they bored right into your soul, if you were willing to meet them head on.
So, yeah, it's interesting that he wore those over-the-top spakly and colorful Nudie suits and became, probably more than anyone else in C&W, most associated with them. Perhaps he donned them to (consciously or unconsciously) make up for a distinct lack of flashy show-biz performance persona.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:05 PM on August 10, 2012 [2 favorites]
So, yeah, it's interesting that he wore those over-the-top spakly and colorful Nudie suits and became, probably more than anyone else in C&W, most associated with them. Perhaps he donned them to (consciously or unconsciously) make up for a distinct lack of flashy show-biz performance persona.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:05 PM on August 10, 2012 [2 favorites]
OK, so, was Dolly's hair completely absurdly huge in 60's and 70's terms, or did people think, "wow, her hair is AMAZING"????
I mean, in some of those videos, it's really just preposterous. Did people think that was really her hair? Was it a deliberate joke? My experience of Southern life is that the notion of camp either doesn't exist or didn't exist back then for sure. Am I wrong about that?
posted by Sara C. at 8:09 PM on August 10, 2012
I mean, in some of those videos, it's really just preposterous. Did people think that was really her hair? Was it a deliberate joke? My experience of Southern life is that the notion of camp either doesn't exist or didn't exist back then for sure. Am I wrong about that?
posted by Sara C. at 8:09 PM on August 10, 2012
Was it a deliberate joke? My experience of Southern life is that the notion of camp either doesn't exist or didn't exist back then for sure.
That notion wouldn't be quite accurate. C&W camp existed, for sure. It's right there in Dolly's hair, it's right there in the Nudie suits, and in fact it's right there in the absurdly overplayed "hillbilly" look of comic characters like Stringbean and others. That's Southern Camp.
The Southern Camp hair, of course, was also later reinterpreted by Athens, Georgia's The B 52s, although with perhaps more of a nod toward 60s pop-music beehive/helmet hair styles.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:16 PM on August 10, 2012
That notion wouldn't be quite accurate. C&W camp existed, for sure. It's right there in Dolly's hair, it's right there in the Nudie suits, and in fact it's right there in the absurdly overplayed "hillbilly" look of comic characters like Stringbean and others. That's Southern Camp.
The Southern Camp hair, of course, was also later reinterpreted by Athens, Georgia's The B 52s, although with perhaps more of a nod toward 60s pop-music beehive/helmet hair styles.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:16 PM on August 10, 2012
I mean, I know, sort of? But wow. Just. Wow. I don't think someone parodying Southern women's big hair would construct anything that huge. It makes Kate Pierson's bouffants look like something Nancy Spungen would do.
Like, I mean, this is not even her biggest hair.
posted by Sara C. at 8:24 PM on August 10, 2012
Like, I mean, this is not even her biggest hair.
posted by Sara C. at 8:24 PM on August 10, 2012
Aha. This is the video where I started to think her hair had to be a joke.
posted by Sara C. at 8:49 PM on August 10, 2012
posted by Sara C. at 8:49 PM on August 10, 2012
It hurts the troll in me so much that you didn't slip Lily Allen in there.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:45 PM on August 10, 2012
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:45 PM on August 10, 2012
Wow!
This is cool.
I have the whole weekend to go through the videos.
posted by dougzilla at 9:52 PM on August 10, 2012
This is cool.
I have the whole weekend to go through the videos.
posted by dougzilla at 9:52 PM on August 10, 2012
This one gets my vote for best post of August, even if the mods don't agree.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:17 AM on August 11, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:17 AM on August 11, 2012 [3 favorites]
Like other mid-Seventies-born kids, P.W. was a huge influence on my life, despite seeing few episodes at the time. Thanks for reminding us, dirtdirt. I've had the privilege of seeing a few Nudie suits on display and they are astounding.
posted by bonobo at 1:45 AM on August 11, 2012
posted by bonobo at 1:45 AM on August 11, 2012
"OK, so, was Dolly's hair completely absurdly huge in 60's and 70's terms, or did people think, "wow, her hair is AMAZING"????"
The bigger the hair the closer to God.
posted by jeffen at 8:45 AM on August 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
The bigger the hair the closer to God.
posted by jeffen at 8:45 AM on August 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
My experience of Southern life is that the notion of camp either doesn't exist or didn't exist back then for sure. Am I wrong about that?
They even have TV now, in some places. And indoor toilets.
posted by bongo_x at 9:44 AM on August 11, 2012
They even have TV now, in some places. And indoor toilets.
posted by bongo_x at 9:44 AM on August 11, 2012
I almost killed Porter Wagoner while he was walking his dog near his house.
I grew up in Nashville, and when I was 16 or 17 he lived near my high school. I was driving like a dick -- too fast and without fear -- and got a little wide going into a left hand curve. My right wheels dropped into the macadam "sidewalk", which is where Mr. Wagoner was walking his dog, ahead of me. He had to jump into the grass and almost fell ass-over-teakettle down a hill. Besides the "HOLY SHIT I ALMOST KILLED THAT GUY" thought that I immediately beat myself up with was the "NO F-IN WAY, THAT WAS PORTER WAGONER!" This was 1979-ish.
Link to where in happened.
posted by legweak at 1:04 PM on August 11, 2012
I grew up in Nashville, and when I was 16 or 17 he lived near my high school. I was driving like a dick -- too fast and without fear -- and got a little wide going into a left hand curve. My right wheels dropped into the macadam "sidewalk", which is where Mr. Wagoner was walking his dog, ahead of me. He had to jump into the grass and almost fell ass-over-teakettle down a hill. Besides the "HOLY SHIT I ALMOST KILLED THAT GUY" thought that I immediately beat myself up with was the "NO F-IN WAY, THAT WAS PORTER WAGONER!" This was 1979-ish.
Link to where in happened.
posted by legweak at 1:04 PM on August 11, 2012
Somehow I missed this when I was growing up the late 60s and 70s, and never even listened to any of his stuff until about 5 years ago...my fiancee introduced me to it, and holy cow, that's some good stuff. Great post - thank you.
posted by davidmsc at 9:13 AM on August 12, 2012
posted by davidmsc at 9:13 AM on August 12, 2012
bongox, I grew up in the south.
At least in my experience, the culture is less snarky, less ironic, and has less tendency to parody.
There is a subtle sort of camp aesthetic (the Nudie suit is a great example, as flapjax at midnite mentions), but often it's not recognized as such from the ground level.
Growing up in the south, I've known people who genuinely like The 700 Club, Peach Nehi, cream cheese & pepper jelly h'ors d'oeuvres*, and NASCAR. Not as a joke. Not with a wink and a nudge. There was no "put a bird on it" for Southern culture as I experienced it growing up.
*OK, this is unironically awesome, but it's rare to see anyone in the North eat anything like this with a straight face.
posted by Sara C. at 10:43 PM on August 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
At least in my experience, the culture is less snarky, less ironic, and has less tendency to parody.
There is a subtle sort of camp aesthetic (the Nudie suit is a great example, as flapjax at midnite mentions), but often it's not recognized as such from the ground level.
Growing up in the south, I've known people who genuinely like The 700 Club, Peach Nehi, cream cheese & pepper jelly h'ors d'oeuvres*, and NASCAR. Not as a joke. Not with a wink and a nudge. There was no "put a bird on it" for Southern culture as I experienced it growing up.
*OK, this is unironically awesome, but it's rare to see anyone in the North eat anything like this with a straight face.
posted by Sara C. at 10:43 PM on August 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
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posted by zipadee at 2:16 PM on August 10, 2012