Porter Wagoner

This generic comp is part of an ongoing series from RCA Nashville; it was released at the same time as similarly packaged retrospectives of work by Dolly Parton, whom Wagoner partnered with on a syndicated TV show in the late ’60s before the former got famous, along with the late Jim Reeves and Keith Whitley. It contains a number of the pompadoured Wagoner’s standard hits—“A Satisfied Mind,” “Misery Loves Company,” “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “The Cold Hard Facts of Life,” “The Carroll County Incident.” It also contains a bizarre self-penned number from 1971, “The Rubber Room,” which is worth the price of the CD. “When a man sees things and hears sounds that’s not there / He’s headed for the rubber room,” Wagoner snarls over a minor-key track not unlike Hank Williams’ “Kaw-Liga,” before the song devolves into a mess of stupid echo effects, sappy choral voices and twanging guitars. Get it.