Porter Wagoner

Porter Wagoner's 1963 recording of "Y'all Come" is an oddity in that producer Chet Atkins chose to give Wagoner, a hard country singer, an outright hillbilly song and then overlay it with a female vocal chorus that sounds like it's moonlighting from The Lawrence Welk Show. The album is full of that sort of schizophrenic production, with Wagoner's straight country sounds coated with a thick pop gloss in an apparent attempt to replicate the sound of Claude King's "Wolverton Mountain" on every track. The songs are generally excellent, including covers of "Don't Let Me Cross Over," "Angel Band," and "Pick Me Up on Your Way Down," but the bright electric guitar arpeggios are distracting and the chorus is downright ridiculous. A remake of Wagoner's early hit "Company's Comin'" with hyperactive electric guitar is pure filler, and "Come on In" is practically a reprise of "Y'all Come," but the album has a number of decent cuts even though purists won't appreciate Atkins' aggressively commercial production style. ~ Greg Adams, Rovi