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Glenn Cook's avatar

Fascinating is a great word to describe this piece and its subject. I'm decidedly not a fan of Wagoner or much of that era of Nashville music, with my tastes leaning much more toward the Outlaw Country era and its harder sound that followed. That said, the musicians at Studio A were top notch, and their work with Elvis in the early 1960s showed their talent in ways that I felt were suppressed by artists like Waggoner and Chet Atkins, especially.

What you've done here is point out beautifully some of the extremes/contraditions in Waggoner's catalog. Many of these murder ballads gave (and still give) me the creeps as a kid, but they were effective nonetheless. Thanks for writing this. It's very well done, as always.

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Hugh Jones's avatar

Great piece. I'm not very familiar with Porter Waggoner but I'm reminded of The Louvin Brothers rendition of "Knoxville Girl," another chilling murder ballad sung in beautiful, lilting harmony.

I'm guessing you are already familiar with it, but for others reading this, if you're interested in some deep dives into 'creepy' country music stories - and some not so creepy too - I highly recommend Tyler Mahan Coe's excellent podcast "Cocaine & Rhinestones."

He hasn't done an episode on Porter, yet, but I expect he'll get to it in time.

https://cocaineandrhinestones.com/

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