A rhinestone cowboy at home on the stage

When the stage lights fix on Porter Wagoner , you almost have to look away. There's just too much sparkle, from the country patriarch's diamond-encrusted belt and boots to the hot-pink dress shirt tucked underneath the Nudie suit bejeweled with glimmering wagon wheels. His famous golden pompadour is now stark silver.

But at 79, Wagoner is still the resplendent rhinestone cowboy everyone expects him to be, the godfather of country bling who probably doesn't know what that means.

With the subway rattling the floor beneath him, Wagoner looks a little out of place at Joe's Pub. It's late March, a few months before the release of his new album, "Wagonmaster," which comes out Tuesday. Wagoner, a fixture at the Grand Ole Opry, has sold out the cozy venue for his first New York City performance in at least two decades.

After yet another round of applause and cheers, Wagoner surveys the mixed crowd and seems disbelieving but also relieved.

"I'm so glad my granddaughter is here in the audience tonight," he finally says. "I've been telling her for years that I'm popular as hell."

Afterward, Wagoner is backstage holding a meet-and-greet, and the first person eager to shake his hand is Laura Cantrell , a neo-country singer who was born in Nashville but lives in New York. She looks awestruck, all wide eyes, and perhaps unintentionally greeting him in slow motion: "Hello . . . Porter . . . Wagoner."

The next morning in his hotel room, Wagoner still can't get over that night.

"Man, I couldn't believe the crowd was so quiet and knew the songs," he says. "I've never played for a better audience in my life. And here we are in New York City."

Porter Wagoner has been like this for most of his 60-year career: exceedingly humble and nearly oblivious to just how influential and helpful he has been to generations of country and rock musicians.

He's credited as a pioneer who brought country music to the masses with his syndicated show. From 1960-1981, "The Porter Wagoner Show" was a bastion of down-home kitsch broadcast in more than 100 markets and put country and gospel music into living rooms across the nation.

And then there's this bit about him giving a fledgling singer named Dolly Parton her big break in 1967 when he chose her to replace Norma Jean as his singing partner on his TV show. (More on Parton later.) When reminded of all these achievements, Wagoner shakes his head. "I've never been one to take credit for myself," he says.

Instead, he has the odd distinction of being both a lion of country music and one of its most unsung heroes, known more for his flashy image than his music, especially outside Nashville. Most of his major hits ("A Satisfied Mind," "The Carroll County Accident," and "Green, Green Grass of Home" ) came in the '50s and '60s, and he isn't particularly known for his own songs, but his generosity and showmanship are legendary.

Pam Tillis considers him an influence on two generations of her family. She says when Wagoner put her father, Mel Tillis , on his TV show, it forever changed her family's life. And she still marvels at Wagoner's modest upbringing in West Plains, Mo., in the Ozark Mountains.

"For someone who grew up in the rural Midwest during the Depression to step out onstage in a thousand rhinestones like that -- you've got to love that kind of imagination," Tillis says. "That's the epitome of a self-made man."

These days Wagoner would rather express his gratitude. He thanks his doctor for saving his life after Wagoner suffered an abdominal aneurysm last year. (He's in much better shape now.) He thanks his fans for their letters of support . ("I never dreamed I even had that many of them . ") And most of all, he thanks Marty Stuart , the country musician who produced his new album.

Stuart has become Wagoner's right-hand man, more a buddy and sidekick than an admiring younger musician trying to show everyone how cool his mentor is. This isn't Loretta Lynn collaborating with Jack White, after all. Nor is it Johnny Cash, wizened in his twilight years, reinventing himself with Rick Rubin at the production helm.

"I'm not going to put a Nine Inch Nails song in Porter's mouth, because it doesn't belong there," Stuart says, referring to Cash's ballyhooed cover of "Hurt." "It wouldn't be appropriate."

"Wagonmaster" does something simpler and better than that: It distills Wagoner's artistry to its unvarnished core and returns him to traditional country after several gospel albums. Backed by Stuart and his band (and featuring Buck Trent , who played on Wagoner's TV show, on electric banjo), it's stripped bare of slick production and rock-radio crossover appeal.

The only echo of the Man in Black here is "Committed to Parkview," which Cash wrote and wanted Wagoner to have back in 1981. Cash gave a tape of the song to Stuart, who was supposed to pass it along but instead promptly forgot about it. He unearthed it only when he and Wagoner began recording the new album. Wagoner hadn't known he and Cash had both spent time at the psychiatric hospital of the song title. (Wagoner says his two-month stint there was related to exhaustion from being on the road all the time.)

Wagoner wasn't always associated with straight country, though. Starting in the late '60s, he cut a singular figure in country music, recording a series of hair-raising murder ballads best described as "psychedelic country." Except Wagoner's murder ballads weren't of the Appalachian and British-folk variety. They were modern tales usually involving marital indiscretions, often sung in a placid voice that could belong either to a preacher man or a serial killer.

The singer in "The Cold Hard Facts of Life" comes home early one evening to surprise his wife with champagne, only to find she's keeping company with another man.

Just as you're feeling sorry for him, Wagoner drinks "a fifth of courage" and enters the house to confront the two: "They screamed and cried, 'Please put away that knife'/ I guess I'll go to hell/ Or I'll rot here in this cell/ But who taught who the cold hard facts of life?"

Forty years on, that era of his career has attracted a cult following. Last year, an Australian label compiled "The Rubber Room," which collected 29 of Wagoner's creepiest songs from 1966-1977. The sticker on the front cover says it best: "Psychotronic, dark, heartfelt country . . . with a touch of showbiz!"

The online age has also resurrected some of Wagoner's Technicolor heyday. ("The Porter Wagoner Show" still hasn't made the leap to DVD, but Wagoner says that could soon be in the works.) Nearly 100 YouTube videos show Wagoner's finer TV moments, often dueting with a baby-faced Parton, who looks so gracious and affable at his side.

Parton figures prominently in Wagoner's biography. At Joe's Pub, when Wagoner flubs a line in "My Many Hurried Southern Trips," which he co-wrote and originally sang with Parton, he quickly realizes what went wrong.

"You know what that is?" he says to Stuart. "That's Dolly's part."

He laughs about it now, but he and Parton haven't always been on the best terms. When she left his show to pursue her own career in 1974, the fallout between them played out in public. Legal battles and the rumor mill flared up, but they resolved their differences years ago.

A few weeks back, at Wagoner's Grand Ole Opry show celebrating his 50 years as an Opry member, the two reunited to sing together. With Wagoner seated on the stage, Parton draped her arm around him and tenderly sang the song she wrote for him: "I Will Always Love You." A roving camera crew caught Wagoner wiping his eyes.

Parton was among the guests celebrating the release of "Wagonmaster," which, good as it is, didn't find an immediate home.

"No one would sign Porter," Stuart says. "We did something you can't do in Nashville: We made a country record."

Stuart shopped the album to Nashville labels, knowing full well that no one would understand its merits. Still, he wanted the satisfaction of knowing that Nashville didn't want this album.

"I had these executives say to me, 'Who are the guest musicians? Who's on the album?' And I said to them, 'Porter [expletive] Wagoner. That's who's on the album.' "

Then Stuart approached Anti- , a hip Los Angeles-based label known for its eclectic rock and hip-hop roster, but also home to Tom Waits, Bettye LaVette, and Neko Case.

And that makes perfect sense to Stuart, who says Wagoner has been ripe for a rediscovery.

"The beauty of Porter to me is that he's pure country," he says. "And what's important to remember is that Porter has never been overexposed."

Tillis puts it more simply: "When you're classic like Porter, you don't go out of style."

James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.