WTF: Porter Wagoner’s The Bottom of the Bottle
Porter Wagoner may have been one of the legends of country music, but the dudes who approved the artwork for his records were clearly smoking Jimson weed for this one. Just WTF is going on with this picture, anyway?
Wagoner looks like he’s contemplating drinking this rotgut in spite of the fact that there’s a little man inside. “Hey Porter, over here! Look, you don’t wanna drink this. I just wee’d inside this bottle and it smells like a homeless shelter. Fer chrissakes, Porter…DON’T DRINK MEEEEEEEEE!”
The expression on Porter Wagoner’s face is priceless. It’s a cross between “Goddamn, I really want to tie one on here,” and “I wonder if free will is an artificial construct of the human mind or if it’s a crucial part of what makes our all-too-brief existence what it is?”
Or perhaps it’s kidney stones.
Those covers — many of which found Wagoner sporting all manners of wardrobe and makeup to emphasize the album’s title: As you can see he was decked out as a hobo on Confessions of a Broken Man, staring into a reflection of himself as a wino on The Bottom of the Bottle. The title song lyrics also illustrate this “At the bottom of the bottle is where a man can hide-When he must cross a river he knows is too wide-When the bottle is empty even heartaches are gone-Though his eyes can’t see no one he don’t feel alone-Come go with me to the bottom of the bottle-On our way down we may meet fond memories-I talk better from the bottom of the bottle
Come join the man who she left so helplessly-
But I agree, by today’s standards, the artwork of those 60’s album covers are pretty cheesy by todays standards.