The Last Of The Hillbillies Speaks His Mind

THE SONG is called 'The Arizona Whiz', and it appears on Porter, which, when he released it last fall, was Porter Wagoner's first album in way too long. Like all the songs on that album, it was of a type you don't hear so often these days a hardcore country song about an old man who was called in to fill a college date with just his harp and acoustic guitar after a "king of rock and roll" had cancelled. The man is described as "old and wrinkled, bent and broke, wearing blue jeans and a scarf around his throat." He was not what the kids had come to see and hear, but he won them over anyhow with his songs of "matrimony, broads and booze and love and war."