Porter Wagoner returns from obscurity
Porter Wagoner looks right at home in the marble lobby of Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel. He wears a dark Western suit and tie and holds a shiny black cane. The glare from the crystal chandelier reflects off his eyeglasses as he tilts his head back, trying to remember the last time he played Madison Square Garden.
Sometime in the ’70s … one of those package tours … Little Jimmie Dickens and Faron Young were there … some others he can’t recall …
Back then, “The Thin Man from West Plains” was still the grand showman of country music with his rhinestone suits and pompadour hair. He had a TV show and dozens of hits on his own and with a pretty young blonde named Dolly Parton.
All that faded with time, and so did Wagoner. He checked into a psychiatric hospital for exhaustion, his show went off the air, he was dropped from his record label and dismissed as a relic. Last summer he nearly died.
Except for his standing gig on the Grand Ole Opry, he was mostly forgotten.
“I was thinking while on stage last night, ‘This is the biggest, most well-known arena in the country, and here I am performing at it,’” he says the morning after a show with the White Stripes.
Only a few months ago, Wagoner, who’s about to turn 80, would have said he’d done and seen everything in this business, that nothing could surprise him.
Boy, would he have been wrong.
The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., is nearly full as the red curtain rises and the band plays a fast, choppy rhythm.
Wagoner comes out in a sparkly blue suit, dark pink shirt and white cowboy boots and sings a sprightly old tune about a moonshiner. His long face is creased, his once-golden hair silvery gray.
“Thank you all. Welcome to the show. It’s good to be with you tonight.”
The Opry has been Wagoner’s weekend routine for as long as many can remember. As host and performer, he’s the personification of the long-running country music show, much as Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff once were.
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