It’s generally understood that onetime country music kingpin Porter Wagoner was what my North Carolina native friend Sara Price would call a “jackwagon.” Well, he wrote a real jackwagon farewell song to a woman, and it goes a little something like this:
Meanwhile, Dolly Parton, who is pretty much the antithesis of a jackwagon as far as many of us are concerned, wrote a very different type of farewell ditty—which was about leaving The Porter Wagoner Show, where she’d gotten her start. And which she performed on said show, all class and not a touch of resentment for the reason she was leaving: Wagoner’s insistence on maintaining control of her career.
To which Wagoner replied, “That’s the prettiest song I ever heard. And you can go, providing I get to produce that record.”
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