![]() In 1966 his doctor admitted him to Parkview, a former Nashville psychiatric hospital. He was doing 200 concerts a year besides television and records. He was separated from his second wife (his first marriage, when he was just 16, was annulled after less than a year). But it's a fact that when you're involved with attorneys and companies that have them on retainer, it makes a different story." "Dolly and I never had a problem, and we don't today. Today, Wagoner says they were always on good terms. The split was messy with Wagoner suing over contractual issues and the two settling out of court in 1980. They were witty and sassy together and had a run of hits.īut they clashed over the music and the show, and in 1974 Parton left. To ease the transition, he'd have her sing duets with him. She was afraid they wouldn't like her, and they didn't like her at first because they didn't know her." She talked so fast and was real nervous on stage. "The first couple of days were pretty tough for her because she didn't know how to talk to people. She joined the show in 1967, replacing the popular Norma Jean.Īs Wagoner recalls, her debut was a disaster. Parton, all baby-faced and bouffant-haired, wasn't Wagoner's first or only female singing partner, but she certainly became his most famous. What they preached was that you wanted them laughing one minute and crying the next _ a complete span of emotion," says Steve Buchanan, vice president for media and entertainment at Gaylord Entertainment, owner of the Grand Ole Opry. ![]() "Porter carries on the tradition of people like Roy Acuff, who came out of that vaudeville past. ![]() ![]() The format was loose and down-home, blending comedy and music from Wagoner's dapper band, the Wagonmasters, and a variety of guests. "The Porter Wagoner Show" aired from 1960 until 1981, reaching more than 100 markets and 3.5 million viewers. "Would you 'Run That by Me One More Time,'" she giggles as they begin one of their many duets. "If you ever hit me and I find out, Dolly Parton, you'll be in trouble." "Not yet, but I think I will after this," she shoots back. "Me and my sidekick here _ she just kicked me in the side," a sideburned Wagoner cracks to the camera. And yet his biggest break was still a few years off. The budding star lit out for Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry in the mid-'50s where he joined Acuff, Pearl, Bill Monroe and all the others he'd idolized. Why buy a ticket if they can see you on television?' Well, that was a myth. "Everyone I talked to about television, people in the music business, told me, 'You better not be doing television on a regular basis or people won't come to see you. Television was still young, but Wagoner saw potential others didn't. He started in radio then became a regular on the "Ozark Jubilee," one of the first televised national country music shows. He'd spend hours up there introducing his Opry "guests" and singing their songs. When he was about 10, his dad cut down a large tree in the backyard and left him a stump for a stage. Wagoner dreamed of this since he was a farm boy in West Plains, Mo., a small town in the Ozark Mountains. Porter is country and rightly proud of it," says John Rumble, a historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame, of which Wagoner has been a member since 2002. As host and performer, he's the personification of the long-running country music show, much as Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff once were. The Opry has been Wagoner's weekend routine for as long as many can remember.
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