Porter

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a duet arrangement. Notice that nobody comes in on the second part.)

[Verse 1]
Porter Wagoner had a syndicated television show and a rhinestone suit
and he hired a twenty-one-year-old girl to replace a singer people loved,
and the audience booed her, on air, for months, and he stood there and said
give her a chance, week after week, until they did, and they did.

[Chorus]
Seven years. Seven years of duets and a bus and his name above hers,
and he taught her the business and he produced her and he believed it early,
and he also owned a piece of everything, and he also could not let go,
and both of those men were the same man, and she has never denied either.

[Verse 2]
And when she went — and she had to go, she was too big for the show by 1973 —
he sued her. A million dollars. For leaving. And it went on for years.
And she paid him. She settled and she paid him and she said afterward
that he had earned some of it and that she would not talk about the rest.

[Chorus]
Seven years. And she did not write him an angry song. She could have.
She wrote him the other kind — she wrote a letter and set it to music,
and she took it into his office and sat down and sang it to him,
and he cried, and he said: alright then. You can go. If I can produce it.

[Bridge]
And thirty-four years later she sang it again at his funeral,
the same song, in the same key, that she had written to leave him with,
which had by then been sung at ten thousand other people's leavings
by people who had never heard of Porter Wagoner and never will.

[Outro]
(the second harmony part is still empty)
He framed the receipt.
He sued her for a million dollars.
She sang it at his funeral.