Porter Wagoner: "Missouri Loves Company"

Porter Wagoner

"Misery Loves Company"

(Image from You Tube)

After posting yesterday on Porter Wagoner's death, the thought occurred to me that I might be able to find some You Tube video of Porter singing "Misery Loves Company" -- I was right. Here's the man singing that song with a couple of other musicians whom I don't recognize, and if you listen with the right mental framework, he really does sound like he's saying "Missouri Loves Company":

"Misery Loves Company"

I wish that the video's quality were better. In the first half of the song, the words being sung and the lips doing the singing don't match very well, but when the camera focuses on Porter alone, the match is perfect. [Note, I've now updated the video link.]

Humor aside, that song isn't one of my favorites. I like better this other song from his recent, most critically acclaimed Wagonmaster album, a song apparently about a nervous breakdown that he once had:

"Committed to Parkview"

It can also be seen and heard at Amazon, the site that I linked to yesterday but only later noticed hosts this same video as well. In "Committed to Parkview," Porter looks like Andrew Jackson might have looked if he'd become a country musician rather than the seventh president of the United States.

I was telling this to my wife yesterday, and she asked, "Who's Andrew Jackson?" She didn't ask me who Porter Wagoner was...

If you, though, ain't got no notion of who Porter Wagoner was, here's a ten-minute video of Porter and Dolly Parton having a good ol' time reminiscing about good ol' times on The Porter Wagoner Show. You even get to see Speck Rhodes on the bass.

You might not like this kind of music, and I can understand that reaction, having myself reacted against it at times, but it's some authentic Americana, and it's part of who I am . . . not that you'd consider that any sort of positive recommendation.