Vintage Vinyl Review: Porter Wagoner- “Soul of a Convict and Other Great Prison Songs”

Originally published at MoonRunners

“Miracles appear in the strangest of places,” as Willie said.

Today, while we were on a pointless excursion in town, my brother decided he wanted to visit one of our local pawnshops and check out some guns. I had nothing better to do, so no complaints from my end. It was an old, dusty building with paint peeling from every wall; probably a locally-run department store back in the days before Wal-Mart took over and left the downtown area a virtual wasteland. Then, lo and behold, among the heavy supply of shotguns, chainsaws, and XBox games that looked as if they belonged in another shop entirely, I found it: the most magnificent cache of vinyl that I have seen since our town’s mom and pop record store closed sometime in the early part of the last decade.

Having a limited amount of cash and time, I had to choose wisely and while I hope that the Ernest Tubb gospel record will still be there next week, I went instead for things like a pristine copy of Rubber Soul, a 1965 gem called Wanda Jackson Sings Country Songs, and a 1967 from LP from “Country” Charley Pride, featuring liner notes from the man himself, Waylon Jennings. How that came about is probably best saved for another article. But the point is, amidst the stacks of classic country and rock records, I was in fucking Heaven.

But the real gem was a concept album by Porter Wagoner called Soul of a Convict and Other Great Prison Songs, released over a year before At Folsom Prison and featuring liner notes that detail a gig Porter played at an unnamed penitentiary. As I’ve already mentioned in a previous article, country music and prison have a long, incestuous relationship and concept albums were also nothing new in country music by 1967, with Marty Robbins having released his Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs nearly a decade earlier and with Johnny Cash releasing a long string of themed records, perhaps the best of which was 1964’s Bitter Tears. But if Soul of a Convict isn’t quite groundbreaking, it is nevertheless nearly perfect from start to finish and I feel safe calling it a lost classic of the country genre.

The big hit here is Wagoner’s definitive rendition of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” but it’s the other tunes that make up the real meat of the album. Take for instance “Let Me In,” the tale of a young boy in search of his convict father that rivals even “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” for pathos. Then there’s the spectacular title track, one of several recitations on the album. And, as any old school country fan can tell you, nobody, not even Red Sovine, could do a recitation quite like Porter Wagoner. Interestingly enough, the sentiment expressed in the title track makes me wonder if Cash hadn’t heard it before penning “San Quentin.”

The rest of the album features Porter singing superb songs of confinement, backed by a stellar backing band and if his versions of “I Heard that Lonesome Whistle Blow” and “Folsom Prison Blues” (credited here as simply “Folsom Prison”) aren’t quite as definitive as the originals, they are still great versions done by one of the true originals of the genre and in the case of the latter it’s interesting to hear Porter’s take on a song that was destined to be a karaoke classic in coming decades and to hear the uncredited pedal steel player try to mimic Luther Perkins’ rockabilly guitar solo.

If I’ve convinced you to scour eBay for a copy of this record, I’ve done my job, but that isn’t even the main point here. The point is that this record, which peaked at number 7 on Billboard’s country albums chart in it’s time, has been forgotten for over 40 years. And we’re talking Porter Wagoner, a man who was one of country’s biggest stars for the better part of five decades. Which begs the question, what else is out there? While the record labels continually reissue classic albums from rock’s glory days, country album reissues are few and far between, unless you’re willing to shell out tons of money for imports which may or may not be what you’re looking for. If you don’t believe me, try finding a Johnny Paycheck CD that isn’t either a greatest hits package or a compilation of his phenomenal Little Darlin’ material. In part this is because the Nashville system was focused on creating hit singles and many albums contained obscene amounts of filler (was there really a great demand to hear Stonewall Jackson cover Three Dog Night or the aforementioned Paycheck cover Neil Diamond?). Yet there were many great country albums released during this time that deserve as much respect as the best of the classic rock era. And Soul of a Convict deserves to sit on your shelf proudly next to Red Headed Stranger, Honky Tonk Heroes, and the two Johnny Cash prison albums that would follow in it’s footsteps.

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MoonRunners is a writers collective internet magazine about, but not limited to Country, and Southern-influenced music, “XXX” and Southern culture.