PW-icon

Every genre of music has its dark side.  Even a bas­tion of family-friendly enter­tain­ment like coun­try music har­bors a shad­owy under­tow that doesn’t shy away from the less pleas­ant ele­ments of life and human nature.  Proof for this asser­tion can be found in many places: clas­sic coun­try songs like “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash or “Delta Dawn” by Tanya Tucker are full of mor­bid themes and dis­turb­ing psy­chol­ogy.  Virtually every coun­try per­former from the genre’s clas­sic era has a few skin-crawling tunes in their back catalog.

However, few per­form­ers could cre­ate a country-music creep­fest the way Porter Wagoner could.  For those not famil­iar with his work, Wagoner was known to coun­try fans as “Mr. Grand Olé Opry.”  He wrote and per­formed sev­eral decades’ worth of hits for him­self and other artists, he intro­duced the world to Dolly Parton and he ran a suc­cess­ful syn­di­cated t.v. talk show for just over two decades.  In short, he was one of coun­try music’s great­est ambas­sadors.  He was also capa­ble of writ­ing a song that could scare the beje­sus out of you — or take you into the deep­est, dark­est clutches of emo­tions and thoughts most peo­ple pre­fer to avoid.

Wagoner usu­ally doled out songs of this nature a few times per album but a mas­sive trea­sure trove of them can found in one place on an amaz­ing com­pi­la­tion called The Rubber Room.  This disc was put together by an Australian label,  Omni Recording Corp, who spe­cial­izes in the eso­teric side of pop­u­lar music (every­thing from coun­try to moog records), so the set has been curated with a gen­uine pas­sion and an eye for the unique.  It’s also skill­fully pro­grammed, lay­ing out the songs in a man­ner that cre­ates ver­tig­i­nous loop-de-loops of emo­tion guar­an­teed to keep the lis­tener on edge and pay­ing attention.

And rest assured, these songs will put you through the wringer.  The title track was a hit that offers a dis­turb­ing account of the tit­u­lar loca­tion and the hor­rors in the minds of its occu­pants, com­plete with quasi-psychedelic echo effects.  Equally dis­turb­ing is “The Cold Hard Facts Of Life,” a chill­ing mur­der bal­lad (and a big hit) with a gothic sense of nar­ra­tive sturm-und-drang beneath the crisp har­monies and twang­ing gui­tars.  “The Carroll County Accident” was just as suc­cess­ful and offers a tightly-crafted exam­ple of the coun­try story-song : it starts as a dis­pas­sion­ate account of a traf­fic acci­dent and trans­forms into a tale of a for­bid­den rela­tion­ship, deceit and a carefully-hidden secret.  The final twist packs a wal­lop and the whole song packs a com­plex, shaded nar­ra­tive into an under-three-minutes run­ning time.

The rest of the album is just as strong as the hits men­tioned above.  There are tales of southern-gothic melo­drama, like “Fairchild,” in which a faith­less lover pushes her devoted man to des­per­ate extremes and “George Leroy Chickashea,” a scary tale of psy­cho­pathic half-breed.  There are also unabashed tear-jerkers, like the spo­ken nar­ra­tive of “The Little Boy’s Prayer” and “Let Me In,” a shame­lessly manip­u­la­tive tune in which a lit­tle boy begs a war­den to be allowed to stay with his father in jail.  Even tunes designed for inspi­ra­tional pur­poses have a dis­turb­ing edge to them: a count-your-blessings tune called “Out Of The Silence (Came A Song) fea­tures a scary spo­ken bridge in which the nar­ra­tor recounts a dream about being crip­pled and the devo­tional “Moments Of Meditation” laces its appre­ci­a­tion of life’s many mir­a­cles with the idea that we will never under­stand why some suf­fer while oth­ers prosper.

The effec­tive­ness of these songs is enhanced by Wagoner’s approach to them: the often-dark tales are backed up by the slick, pre­cise instru­men­ta­tion of crack Nashville ses­sion men and Wagoner sings each of them in a rich bari­tone that is expres­sive with­out going over­board.  The dis­so­nance between the gut-punch inten­sity of the mate­r­ial and the restraint of Wagoner and his play­ers  gives the mate­r­ial a ner­vous ten­sion under its smooth sur­face that keeps the lis­tener hooked.  Once you hear Wagoner’s songs, you won’t for­get them.

Thus, The Rubber Room is a pow­er­ful piece of work that offers a great tes­ta­ment for Wagoner’s skill at deliv­er­ing heavy emo­tion and thoughts under the guise of clean coun­try music.  It’s well worth your time but you bet­ter be pre­pared — Wagoner plays for keeps and the songs col­lected on The Rubber Room will teach many lis­ten­ers a new respect for the emotional/psychological heav­i­ness the genre is capa­ble of achieving.