I was perusing the news last week, and the headline jumped up and screamed at me."Forgotten Music Star Makes Comeback" 

Now, I immediately thought of the old blues stars of yesterday, who sank into obscurity in the 50s. Professor Longhair worked as a janitor for many years prior to being re-noticed in the 70s. Recent TtU subject Lightnin' Hopkins did similar work during the time that the kids who would bring him back in the 70s were growing up and listening to his old, mostly forgotten 45s. So it was with eager interest that I clicked to see who it was. I was stunned to see a name I have not heard or even thought of in 25 years, at the least.

It seems that old-time country music legend Porter Wagoner has made it back to the limelight. And I think that is just a fine, fine thing.

Now, I've never been that big a country fan, but I know the classics because I was raised by one. My dad loved the old-time country. He attended the Grand Ole' Opry once, and will still talk about it, though he'll get confused as to which of his kids was with him. They never made an episode of Hee Haw that dad didn't watch. While I never watched it, I did listen from the other room, though, mostly for the bluegrass. I sure didn't want dad to know that, though.

Now that I'm older, though, I don't mind admitting that. And the next time I talk to dad, maybe I will. After all, I've been a fan of country rock such as has been played by the Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and CSN (and sometimes) Y for two decades now. The difference is nominal. That music and the classic country of folks like Wagoner, Johnny Cash, and Roy Clark is far diferent from today's country. That old stuff has soul, where today's country just has mudflaps.

But while he often appeared on Hee Haw, Porter was much more readily seen on his own show, which, according to the article, ran a solid 21 years, and introduced another major country star, Dolly Parton, known throughout the world for having big, big hair.

 But at the end of that show's run, he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for exhaustion and just seemed to disappear for the most part. His record label dropped him, and the only people who still had an ear for the Thin Man from West Plains was the Opry crowd. The business had changed, the music had changed, and he, quite frankly, didn't want to change with it.

"I stopped making records because I didn't like the way they were wanting me to record," he sighs. "When RCA dropped me from the label, I didn't really care about making records for another label because I didn't have any say in what they would release and how they would make the records and so forth."


See? I told you she had big hair.

But some folks did take an interest, and they've helped find both an audience and a label for him. After a couple of gospel albums, he's produced a country record in his finest tradition, and at 80 years seen that people hadn't quite forgotten his name.

"This is one of the tremendous thrills of my career to be here tonight in Madison Square Garden. God bless you," he says.

Backed by Stuart and his band, the Fabulous Superlatives, he performs seven songs. The crowd is still arriving as he plays, but even the most pierced and tattooed of the bunch seem curious.

His voice grows stronger with the first rain of applause, and when he gets to one of his biggest hits, "Green, Green Grass of Home," a good bit of the audience is singing along.

The next morning, in the elegant Roosevelt Hotel lobby, he's still taking it all in.

"The young people I met backstage, some of them were 20 years old. They wanted to get my autograph and tell me they really liked me. If only they knew how that made me feel, like a new breath of fresh air. To have new fans now is a tremendous thing."

Tears well in his eyes and one streams down his gaunt cheek. And just then one has to wonder whether "The Thin Man from West Plains" finally has seen everything.