Hee Haw episode from September 1990...

Howdy there...some later episodes of Hee Haw have become available, for the moment, on YouTube. The debut episode of the 1990-1991 season (it's final rural season) is available on YouTube. This episode marked the first time that Roy Clark was the sole host of the series. Upon the departure of Buck Owens following the 1985-1986 season the series introduced a guest co-host policy over the next four seasons and it was popular; and fans of the artists loved seeing their favorite bantering with Roy Clark but the guest co-host policy ended after the 1989-1990 season. The premiere episode of the 1990-1991 season featured special guests Garth Brooks, Suzy Bogguss, and tuba player Stan Freese. Also, given the recent passing of Roy Clark, this is a timely upload in that, as mentioned, this is the season in which he became the sole host of the program.



As you can see from the photo this is one of the episodes that aired on CMT in the mid 1990s. They aired reruns of most of the later episodes. TNN, prior to that, had aired a lot of the 1970s and early 1980s episodes. RFD has aired Hee Haw ever since 2008 in chronological order from Season One onward and they're currently up to the year, 1980. The series aired new episodes every year from 1969 until 1992. In this 1990 episode I was delighted to see some sketches that I hadn't seen in years...particularly Kornfield Kops featuring Gordie Tapp and Phil Campbell (screen cap below). Also a highlight is Gailard Sartain's oily lawyer character appearing in a sketch called Biggs, Shy, and Stir.

I had forgotten about the cold opening of the series in this era of it's history. The show opens with a brief exchange by Gordie Tapp and Roni Stoneman as Laverne and Ida Lee and after the comic zinger the opening of the show begins.

To save on air-time, perhaps, the cast was introduced in pairs of two instead of one after the other. By this time Mike Snider had become cast in most roles that would have gone to the late Junior Samples while Dub Taylor had taken over the Judge character previously played by Archie Campbell (whose son, Phil, had become a cast-member by this time). The gospel quartet segment is seen midway through the episode rather than at the end. A sketch I'd forgotten about is The Unlikely Brothers, a spoof of The Odd Couple. The sketch features Jeff Smith (the neat one) and Phil Campbell (the messy one)...the difference being these two are portraying siblings while Felix and Oscar of The Odd Couple were mismatched room-mates. There are a couple of other later episodes of Hee Haw on YouTube that I hadn't been able to see yet but rest assured I'll watch them once I publish this blog entry!!