Porter Wagoner was for several decades the mainstay of the Grand Ole Opry, America's longest-running live music and variety radio programme. He was noted for introducing the country and western star Dolly Parton to the listening public, and his blend of country music, gospel and folksy repartee made Wagoner one of the most popular entertainers of his type. This year Wagoner returned from virtual retirement with a critically acclaimed album that restored his reputation as one of the finest artists of his genre.

Porter Wayne Wagoner was born in 1927 into a farming family in Howell Country, Missouri. He moved with his family to West Plains, Missouri, which would later lead to the lanky singer's nickname of �The Thin Man of the West Plains�. He taught himself to play the guitar as a teenager. He had a job in a butcher's shop where, when business was dragging, he would entertain customers with his singing. The owner, in the belief that Wagoner's singing was garnering good publicity for the shop, sponsored a local radio show that would showcase Wagoner's singing.

In 1951 a radio station, in Springfield, Missouri, hired him and the following year he was signed up by RCA Records. Success was slow in coming � although his song Trademark became a hit for Carl Smith in 1953 � but eventually Wagoner broke into the Top Ten with his ninth single, Company's Comin'. It was followed by success with A Satisfied Mind in 1955, which was later covered by dozens of artists including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Jeff Buckley.

From 1955 to 1956 Wagoner was a regular performer on ABC's Ozark Jubilee; America's first national country music show, it was responsible for popularising the term �country music� itself. He moved to Nashville in 1956 and the following year, after forming his backing band, the Wagonmasters, he joined the line-up of the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly radio show also broadcast on network television.

Wagoner continued to make singles during the 1950s, but it was only when he began to host his own show that he had more big hits. The Porter Wagoner Show ran from 1960 to 1981. By the early 1970s it was syndicated to more than 100 stations, and its audience of three million made it the most popular country music show in the US.

Wagoner introduced to the show the young singer Norma Jean, with whom he sang duets. When she was fired in 1967 and replaced by the unknown Dolly Parton, a hit sensation was born. The buxom blonde's appearance was an instant success, and their first joint single, The Last Thing on My Mind, shot to No 7 in 1968, the first of a string of hits recorded by the duo over the following years. However, by 1974 and the release of No 1 hit Please Don't Stop Loving Me, Parton was eclipsing Wagoner with her own success. That year she recorded I Will Always Love You, a bitter-sweet song about a departed lover that she says was written with Wagoner in mind. They parted acrimoniously the following year although they would in later years restore their friendship.

Apart from his No 2 hit Making Plans in 1980, and an appearance in Clint Eastwood's film Honky Tonk Man in 1982, the next decades were a fallow period for Wagoner.

In 2000, after a 20-year gap, Wagoner released an album of new material, The Best I've Ever Been. It received some critical acclaim, and his album Wagonmaster, released this summer, won further plaudits.

There was to be no Johnny Cash-style renaissance for Wagoner, however. In many respects he was a die-hard traditionalist. Unlike so many other musicians he never swapped his rhinestone suit for a tuxedo. His three Grammy awards from the late 1960s were won for gospel music, one of the roots of country and western. But the reissue of his 1972 album Rubber Room, with its strange vocal effects and odd psychedelic feel, may prompt a late reassessment of his reputation as one of country music's finest stars.

Wagoner was twice married and twice divorced. He is survived his son and two daughters.