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Porter Wagoner: Unplugged |
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Track List 1. Silence In The Wind
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Yes indeed folks, this surely is your Daddy's country music!! And oh what a most welcome oasis this album is.
(Shell Point Records) Porter Wagoner's been
making albums for nearly 50 years. He was instrumental in bringing
country music to a mass audience via TV starting in 1960 with "The
Porter Wagoner Show," which ran for 21 years. He gave Dolly Parton her
start in the business. He topped the charts both as a solo artist and
with his duets with Dolly, and picked up a wagonload of awards along the
way. He's been a mainstay and one of the most popular acts at the Opry, since
he became a member in 1957. Porter Wagoner, with his flashy rhinestone
suits, is a true country music icon and legend.
In 2000, Porter signed with Nashville based
Shell Point Records, and released his first album in twenty years, "The
Best I've Ever Been." That title was no lie, and proved Porter to be
a still very viable and vital artist, even after all these years. He's
followed up that effort with a this new release, Unplugged, that
even tops his last album. Porter's in very fine voice, and the songs are
strong and well written gems. However, don't let the "Unplugged" title
throw you off...there's still bass, guitar and drums, it's not the usual
all acoustic fare you'd expect. It's simply back-to-basics, old school
country music, with lots and lots of hot harmonica licks throughout by
Terry McMillan and Mickey Raphael, and some of the most glorious backing
harmonies you haven't heard in years. Oh yeah, and Willie Nelson drops
by for two duets.
Unplugged is a combination of songs
penned by Porter, and songs penned by others, including Dolly Parton.
Unplugged opens strongly with Porter's self-penned "Silence In
The Wind," the sorrowful and touching lament of a love at it's end. He
then kicks things up several notches with the rousing uptempo,
infectiously fun tale of being bitten by the love bug in "(Why Don't
You) Haul Off And Love Me."
The disc's highlight and stand out track is
"Silver Eagle Meets The Great Speckled Bird," the first of Willie's two
duet appearances. It's a poignant and bittersweet song of that dying
breed of country singers traveling the highways across this country in
those Silver Eagles, and how they'll soon enough be gone, to sing on
that great Opry stage in the sky. With all our veterans and legends
getting so far up there in years, the listener can't help but wipe away
a tear realizing just how true this song is, and at how very much we're
eventually going to lose in both talent and history.
When was the last time you heard a
great song of a woman's betrayal that ultimately finds our hero behind
bars for a crime he didn't commit? Porter offers up a real goodie, by
way of "Girl In The Blue Velvet Band." How about the
mournful, heartbreaking pain of a man as he watches the woman he loves
marry another? Check out "I Cried Again." Wanna hold your sweetie close
and sway to a romantic shuffle? Then "Lost Forever In Your Kisses" is
the song for you. But don't leave the dance floor after that song's
over, because you can pick up the pace and two-step your way around the
dance floor to another of Porter's self penned tunes, the honky tonker
"After All."
"Moses Jones" is a poignant song with the
character telling his young son the story of when he lived with an old
black man, who worked his fields just waiting for the day he could join
his beloved Jenny Lou as he looked up towards the heavens. The
outstanding "Satan Wore Satin" finds a man trying to justify the reason
for his giving into temptation and cheating on his wife. Unplugged
closes with the second duet with Willie, Willie's "Family Bible,"
and how that worn and ragged family Bible was priceless, as it brought
such warm and loving memories of childhood days.
That song is an appropriate closer, as
that's just the kind of feelings Porter delivers with Unplugged.
Yes, it's old school country music, from beginning to end, yet
somehow Porter has managed to make it sound fresh and vital, not dated
in the least. He's provided a warm and familiar haven, that brings
back those warm and loving memories of childhood and days gone by, that
elicit a smile, and sometimes a tear. These days, that's
something priceless indeed.
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AnnMarie
Harrington Take Country Back January 2003