**Author's Note(July 17, 2021): This blog entry originally had two video uploads...one an interview with George Yanok and another with Lulu Roman. They've since been removed from YouTube. The uploader is still on YouTube and so I don't know if the uploader took those videos down or if YouTube removed them. I'm still keeping the blog entry up because it includes my reviews of each of the interviews.**
Hello all! I've written more than 20 blog entries focusing on the television series, Hee Haw, over the years. In a lot of those previous blog entries the video clips I embedded have since been removed from the internet. There were clips on-line featuring comic sketches from the obscure 1992 season. There were clips on-line from episodes that aired in 1990. Those video clips are no longer on-line and as a result some of my previous Hee Haw blog entries show blank video screens. The show, for those new to Hee Haw, aired in first-run production from 1969 until 1992. The show aired on CBS for it's first two seasons, 1969-1971, but beginning in the fall of 1971 it started airing in syndication on local television affiliates. A majority of the local affiliates were owned by CBS but it wasn't uncommon to see Hee Haw airing at 6pm Eastern on a local ABC station and then see it airing on a local CBS affiliate at 7pm Eastern. It's official time slot during it's decades in syndication was 6pm Central on Saturday evening. It's home base was in Nashville, Tennessee and during it's first 12 seasons it was taped at the Channel 5 television studios. The production moved to a studio in Opryland in 1980 and it remained there until it's final episode in 1992.
A YouTube channel called Tee Vee Classics has uploaded a couple of interviews with those who worked on the Hee Haw show. One interview is with cast-member, Lulu Roman. The other interview is with one of the show's main writers for a number of years, George Yanok. The interview is engaging and informative. The writer talks about the complex production of the show and how editing was the driving force behind the series...mentioning that the show won an Emmy in the category of 'Best Electronic Editing of a Primetime Series'. He mentions the show's hosts, Roy Clark and Buck Owens, and makes mention of several other cast members and why it was important to tape the show in Nashville, Tennessee rather than have the cast fly out to Los Angeles.
In the interview with Lulu Roman. She speaks about her upbringing and how so far removed she was from the country music scene and the country music world she had no idea, at first, that she was sharing the stage with legends of country music. She tells how it was Buck Owens who 'discovered' her several years before Hee Haw was even created. Buck had a hit television show that was locally syndicated and for the first several years while co-hosting Hee Haw he remained host of his own television show. He eventually had to give up his own show because, if I'm recalling correctly, it became competition as Hee Haw began showing up on local television affiliates that were carrying Buck's television series.
(July 17, 2021): I know it's not the same as having the two video uploads...but this is the big reason why I usually don't want to include video uploads in most of my blog entries.
A couple of days ago the legendary entertainer, Roy Clark, passed away at the age of 85. Born in Meherrin, Virginia on April 15, 1933 he grew up in a musically inclined family. His mastery of the guitar, banjo, harmonica, and fiddle (just to name the more notable) was astounding...and he spent most of his life in the music business in some form or another...at first competing in and often winning music/instrumental talent shows. His talents on the banjo, for example, helped give him several titles as Top Banjo Player in those local talent shows. He played the instruments I made mention of during his teen years in the mid to late 1940s. The family had moved from Virginia to New York City during the Depression but at age 11, according to on-line biographies, the family moved to the Washington, D.C. area. It was in this area where Roy would eventually established himself in those local talent shows and even appeared on television for the first time at the age of 16 (!) in 1949 on local station WTTG which was affiliated with the DuMont Network. Roy continued on his musical journey throughout the first half of the 1950s touring with the likes of Stringbean (a future co-star of Roy's in a certain television program I'll mention later). Roy had even appeared as a guest on the Grand Ole Opry at age 17 on the strength of his second win in a National banjo competition!
In 1954 Roy became associated with the incomparable Jimmy Dean. Hired as the lead guitarist in the band it afforded him the opportunity to appear on the local radio and, later, television program in the Washington, D.C. area that Jimmy hosted. The series Jimmy hosted was called "Town and Country Time" and episodes aired on WARL-AM radio and then, when it moved to television, WMAL. Although the association with Jimmy Dean was brief it became retroactively famous due to the circumstances surrounding the break-up and the consistent recollections of it in the years and decades that followed. As most of you reading this should already know he was let go by Jimmy Dean due to punctuality or lack thereof. It's long been reported that Jimmy valued punctuality from members of his band and after several years of tardiness Roy was let go. The firing never interfered with their professional careers nor do I think it had any impact personally...given the fact that during the decades to come each of them joked about it and Jimmy often remarked how Roy was the greatest talent and musician he ever had to fire. In fact, Roy would appear on Jimmy's television programs of the 1960s, long after being let go from the band in the mid 1950s...but let's back up a few years.
What might be considered a watershed moment in Roy's career occurred when he joined Wanda Jackson's band which also meant he played on some of her recording sessions and it led to his recording contract with Capitol Records. By 1960 Roy had re-located to Las Vegas. It's through his association with Wanda Jackson that led to his life long association with the Jim Halsey Agency. Perhaps not entirely coincidental is the fact that when Roy began making recurring appearances on "The Beverly Hillbillies" in the late 1960s he appeared as a character named Cousin Roy Halsey (in a duel role Roy appeared in drag as Myrtle Halsey). Roy became a national recording artist through Capitol Records and he recorded a series of albums and released numerous singles for the label in a four year stretch. He had previously released a series of regional singles, though, in the late '50s and early '60s. In 1966 he was part of the cast of the NBC series, "Swinging Country", which ran for two seasons. Roy signed with Dot Records in the mid '60s and it's this label upon which the bulk of his widely known recordings are associated. The lone exception being his 1963 recording of "Tips of My Fingers" for Capitol Records. Roy's version became a Top-10 hit on the country music charts...it was his first appearance on the national music charts...and while several single releases made the charts in the aftermath he wouldn't have another major Top-10 hit until six years later in 1969...
"Yesterday, When I Was Young" was not a new song when Roy recorded it but his rendition became the definitive recording. The song, according to on-line sources, was recorded by Roy in January of 1969 but released several months later in May. This is rather ironic in the career time-line of Roy Clark because a month later his career was changed forever while "Yesterday, When I Was Young" was climbing the charts.
Conceived as a rural version of "Laugh-In", ironically, by two Canadians by the names of John Aylesworth and Frank Peppiatt, they created a program titled "Hee Haw". It's producer, Sam Lovullo, was in charge of casting and he assembled an ensemble for a series of programs initially meant to air on the summer schedule for CBS. The debut episode of "Hee Haw" aired on June 15, 1969 with Roy Clark as one of it's co-hosts. The other co-host happened to be Buck Owens. It's long been said that the teaming of those two, in particular, stemmed from their individual experiences working on television in the years prior to "Hee Haw" and the fact that each artist complimented the other. Buck had a string of huge country music hits dating back to the late '50s and he had connections within the country music industry and could perhaps help get a lot of major recording artists in country music to appear. Roy, on the other hand, didn't have the sort of track record with hit recordings but he come off as a natural comedian/entertainer, had lengthy experience on both local and national television appearances, and could play a multitude of instruments. The other component to the nucleus of the show was a trio of cast-members by the names of Archie Campbell, Don Harron, and Gordie Tapp who doubled as writers for the program but rounding out the nucleus was Junior Samples, Grandpa Jones, and Stringbean...all three (in addition to Archie Campbell) were famous for their country/rural comedy routines with Grandpa, Stringbean, and Archie having been fixtures on the Grand Ole Opry for more than a decade prior to the launch of "Hee Haw" in 1969. Practically everyone associated with the show during the summer 1969 season didn't feel it had any chance of success. After the summer season wrapped up CBS, to the surprise and shock of perhaps all involved, later ordered more episodes due to an opening up on the schedule...it was needed to fill the gap left by the cancellation of "The Leslie Uggams Show". Minnie Pearl, the legendary country comic, joined the cast of "Hee Haw" as a regular in 1970.
Roy and Buck were billed equally as co-hosts...but according to Sam Lovullo's 1996 memoir, Life in the Kornfield, the managers of each artist argued over which co-host would receive top billing in the introduction at the start of each episode. This is why some of the episodes that aired early on featured cast introductions by the announcer stating "starring Roy Clark and Buck Owens" and other episodes having a "starring Buck Owens and Roy Clark" introduction. I don't know the specifics off the top of my head but eventually the opening "starring Buck Owens and Roy Clark" became the one heard at the start of every episode...with the announcer stretching out Roy's name for comic effect...which also gave it a more lasting impact, too...so it came out as "starring Buck Owens and Roy-y-y-y-y-y-y Clark!!" to which Roy would react "...and the whole Hee Haw gang!!!".
To say "Hee Haw" was a surprise hit is putting it mildly. In spite of it being a Top-20 hit show CBS canceled it in 1971 as a result of the Rural Purge taking place on nearly all of the networks. Rural programming and shows appealing to non-Urban areas and older audiences were removed and replaced by so-called hipper programming with a youth driven social-commentating bent. However, in spite of CBS canceling the program, new episodes continued to be produced for the possibility of local television syndication. "Hee Haw" returned to the airwaves in the fall of 1971 on many local affiliates of CBS (the network that canceled it) and in many markets it aired at the same time as it did while on the network (Saturday nights at 7pm Eastern). In conjunction with the Rural Purge and everything going on in network television Roy recorded a timely, satirical song with the eye-catching title: "The Lawrence Welk Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka". Roy performed the song on the first episode of the 1972-1973 season...
Roy's career flourished as a result of his involvement in the series. He was nominated and won several awards at the annual ACM and CMA festivities throughout the 1970s. The CMA named him 'Comedian of the Year' in 1970. In 1972 the ACM awarded Roy the top prize, 'Entertainer of the Year', and then, in 1973, both the ACM and CMA awarded Roy as 'Entertainer of the Year'. For those curious ACM stands for Academy of Country Music while CMA stands for Country Music Association.
By the mid '70s "Hee Haw" was established as a major non-network hit program syndicated all over the country. In it's peak it was carried by more than 200 television stations. Roy's career, as mentioned, skyrocketed. His albums and single releases for Dot Records were consistently in the Top-40 of the country charts. In fact, his highest charting album came along in 1973...the LP Roy Clark's Family Album reached the runner-up position on the Country Album chart. The same year another LP from Roy, Come Live With Me, hit number four. The title track of that album was the only single of his career to hit #1. Roy and fellow musician, Buck Trent, became a notable performing duo. It helped that Buck Trent was also a "Hee Haw" cast member and regularly appeared in instrumental performances. As a result of their performances the CMA named them 'Instrumental Group of the Year' in both 1975 and 1976. Also in 1976 Roy had made international headlines when he decided to tour the Soviet Union...the first country music performer to do so.
The label he'd been recording for since 1968, Dot, was merged with ABC Records in 1974 and that label, renamed ABC/Dot, was taken over by MCA in 1979...resulting in Roy's recordings now being on the MCA label. This take over proved unsuccessful for Roy's recording career, though. The four studio albums MCA released on Roy never charted...rather peculiar considering all of his studio albums for Dot and later, ABC/Dot, all made the sales charts in a 10 year period...several of his single releases for MCA did make the charts, however...so it wasn't as if the label never promoted his music at all. In 1977, 1978, and 1980 the CMA awarded Roy 'Instrumentalist of the Year'.
My Top-10 Roy Clark recordings are as follows:
10. "I'm a Booger" (a funky bluesy song from 1982 you can hear HERE )
9. "Come Live With Me"
8. "I Never Picked Cotton"
7. "Tips of My Fingers"
6. "Alabama Jubilee"
5. "Yesterday, When I Was Young"
4. "If I Had To Do It All Over Again"
3. "Thank God and Greyhound"
2. "Honeymoon Feeling"
1. "The Lawrence Welk Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka"
Anyway, Roy's career had become so successful on the concert trail and through his weekly exposure on "Hee Haw" and other high profile endeavors that the need for commercial hit recordings seemed irrelevant, actually. The show began it's 10th season in 1978 and a 2 hour special was taped to celebrate the event. Earlier I mentioned that Roy's career flourished as a result of co-hosting the show but unfortunately for Buck Owens the opposite effect happened. Buck had built up a long list of hit recordings and spearheaded a movement in recording music referred to as The Bakersfield Sound which operated outside of the Nashville system. Buck's image of being a hardcore honky-tonk singer with his outlaw/maverick tendencies when it came to making music was in sharp contrast to the lovable, happy go lucky, sing-a-long 'Cousin Buck' characterization that came across on "Hee Haw". Even though Buck remained a co-host of "Hee Haw" for many years he ultimately stepped away from the program following the 1985-1986 season (it's 17th). Roy opened up a theater in Branson, Missouri in the early 1980s...he may have been the first or one of the first to do so...and he appeared there regularly until closing it. In 1986 Roy and Mel Tillis starred in a comedy western movie, 'Uphill All The Way', that I personally like even though it was critically panned nationwide. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1987 which, in a way, was kind of odd considering the membership happened several decades after he had already established himself in the music industry...but hey, having 'Opry member' attached to your career isn't anything to shrug off...and he no doubt loved being a member.
Grandpa Jones, Roy Clark, and Minnie Pearl.
The photo above shows Grandpa Jones, Roy Clark, and Minnie Pearl and a cake that celebrates the the show's 21st season (1988-1989). A season earlier the show celebrated it's 20th (1987-1988) with a 2-hour television special just as it had a decade earlier when it hit the 10 year mark during the 1977-1978 season. The 1988 celebration saw the return of Buck Owens, but as a special guest, since he had left as co-host at the end of the 1985-1986 season. Coincidentally that same season marked the final for several other long serving cast-members as well (Don Harron, Jackie Phelps, Lisa Todd, The Hager Twins, and numerous others). After the cast shake-up Roy was joined each week by a special guest co-host and he/she or they (if it was a group) appeared along side Roy in the sketches previously occupied by Buck. Roy became sole host at the start of the 1990-1991 season. However, behind the scenes more changes were on the horizon. The series survived what Sam Lovullo described as "the great cast shake-up of 1986" but more pressure was being added to comply with the changing trends and tastes of syndicated television and the cost was rising (advertising rates). Following the conclusion of the 1990-1991 season and a prolonged repeat cycle that took up the rest of the calendar year the series returned for it's belated 1991-1992 season in January of 1992. The series removed it's long standing backwoods decoration (gone was the haystack, hay-bales, cornfield, and other sets) and these were replaced with Urban decorations. The title of the program had changed to "The Hee Haw Show". There were only a few hold-over cast-members while 90 percent of the cast was all-new.
The episodes that aired from January until May of 1992 were billed as the show's 24th season (1991-1992). After production had officially ended on first-run episodes in 1992 the series returned later in 1992 as "Hee Haw Silver". Unlike the previous pattern of 26 first run episodes followed by 26 repeats, "Hee Haw Silver" episodes weren't repeated...52 first-run episodes were assembled from clips of past episodes. To give the season some exclusive material it featured Roy providing introductions/commentary and wrap-ups for every installment as well as Cathy Baker closing each episode saying "That's All!!" as she had during the run of the regular series. This clip-filled season (1992-1993) officially celebrated the series 25th season on the air. Roy released his autobiography in 1994 titled My Life in Spite of Myself. The Nashville Network began airing reruns of "Hee Haw" in the fall of 1993 and the reruns enjoyed high ratings for several seasons. CMT would later air reruns of the program albeit briefly. Roy also appeared in a television commercial advertising his own signature guitar which also come with a How-To guitar course. He had appeared on commercials in the past for several products during the peak years of his "Hee Haw" popularity.
In 2009 Roy Clark received the country music industry's highest honor when he was elected a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was elected the same year as Barbara Mandrell and session musician, Charlie McCoy. The irony is Charlie happened to be the long-time music director of "Hee Haw" and regularly appeared playing harmonica as part of the Hee Haw Band.
In his later years Roy was more or less retired and his health began to decline. A long time resident of Oklahoma he was often honored by the local civic organizations and a school was named after him in 1978. After a battle with pneumonia Roy Clark passed away at the age of 85 on November 15, 2018.
In this 20th entry in my Hee Haw tribute posts I'm here to spread the word about a couple of Hee Haw related happenings that took place this month that the general public might not be aware of yet. On September 8th Time Life issued a new DVD project titled The Hee Haw Collection: 3 DVD Set. The project is highlighting the inclusion of episodes previously unavailable for commercial/retail purchase. It's only been available for 3 days and here's a PRESS RELEASE about the project and it also features a link to Amazon. There are 5 episodes total in that collection spanning the years 1969-1973.
A YouTube video/commercial appeared several weeks ago (August 4, 2015) for a similar collection being sold exclusively on Time Life's site. I never posted the video clip because I knew very little about the project and the fact that there's the other DVD project I felt it may create confusion...
If you visit Time Life's site it'll have a page advertising 2 separate Hee Haw DVD projects on the same page. There's a DVD package that consists of 11 episodes, 8 discs and there's a DVD package that consists of 23 episodes, 14 discs. Each package includes the Hee Haw Laffs collection of famed comedy sketches from the summer 1969 season and a disc of interviews of surviving cast members. You can visit the Time Life page by clicking this LINK. It's pretty self-explanatory on how to purchase the 2 items.
Here's the YouTube commercial advertising the 8-disc version...
The Hee Haw Laffs is something that's been circulating for close to 20 years. The compilation debuted on VHS in 1996 as a response to the popularity of the reruns on cable TV channel The Nashville Network and in addition to this Opryland had featured a live, stage-version of Hee Haw for several seasons during the mid 1990s consisting mostly of musical numbers, re-creations from the long running series, and it featured a newcomer named Jason Petty...billed as the newest Hee Haw Hunk (the term given to the male equivalent of the female Hee Haw Honey). This Opryland stage show that launched in the summer of 1994, titled Hee Haw Live, coincided with the reruns of the series on TNN. The cast of the Opryland series was very small and it had no official hosts although I'm sure either George Lindsay or Gunilla Hutton acted as emcees. Sam Lovullo, the producer of Hee Haw, released his memoir in 1996 titled Life in the Kornfield.
During the making of that book Hee Haw had become a major success story all over again thanks to TNN's airing of reruns. During it's run on TNN it aired, usually, at 7pm Eastern (6pm Central) Saturday evening. This is the same time slot it had held across most of the country throughout the '70s and '80s before local newscasts and syndicated game shows expanded from 5 to 6 days a week in the early '90s (causing Hee Haw to move from an early Saturday evening time slot to scattered weekend afternoon time-slots across much of the country in it's final 2 seasons). After about a year TNN moved the program from 7pm Eastern to 10pm Eastern following the hour long Statler Brothers television program on the Saturday night schedule. I don't remember the reason for the schedule shift from 7 to 10pm Eastern but it remained at 10pm for the remainder of it's time on TNN.
The Nashville Network, referred to as TNN, had been airing reruns of the program on it's Saturday evening line-up since October 1993. The half hour sketch compilation (Laffs) that appeared on VHS in 1996 has the distinction of being the first commercially available footage of Hee Haw and in the next decade Time Life began releasing DVDs of entire episodes of the program for the first time ever. It filled a demand from fans who had long expressed their desire to have complete episodes of the program available for purchase.
In the years before the DVDs came along, and after the reruns had stopped airing rather abruptly on CMT in 1997 (after a 3 and a half year run on TNN), Roy Clark often mentioned that his fans always asked why episodes of the program had never been made available for purchase or why hasn't reruns of the program surfaced on television again, etc. etc., but Time Life filled the desire with their release of numerous DVDs...and then, in 2008, RFD-TV rescued the series from an almost certain fate of limbo (as far as television airing is concerned) and reruns of the program started airing on the RFD channel and they've aired there ever since. Reruns of the series, by 2008, had never been aired on any television outlet since their final appearances on cable TV in the mid 1990s.
The on-going popularity/fascination with this series via it's exposure on RFD-TV and video clips on YouTube helped spawn a tribute program called Salute to the Kornfield which aired exclusively on RFD-TV in 2012. It's since been released on DVD. A Hee Haw exhibit was unveiled last year in Roy Clark's home state of Oklahoma during the 45th anniversary of the program's debut in 1969. Country Weekly magazine published a nice salute to the program's 45th anniversary celebration.
This year a musical surfaced titled Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical. It's currently making the rounds of various theatrical venues.
Here's another site that promotes the 3-DVD Hee Haw release...it's a bit longer and has some detail and some opinion but it provides a link to Amazon, too...
Yesterday an interesting behind-the-scenes clip about Hee Haw was uploaded onto You Tube. The clip comes from a news program from 1979 and so it's a report conducted when Hee Haw was still in production. There are a few glitches in the video but it doesn't take away from the priceless footage of seeing a typical taping session from the television studio that the show taped their programs in through 1980. You'll notice how small the studio is and you'll also see the show's producer give a brief run down on how the show is put together, in batches, and edited together to comprise 13 episodes. Typically there were 13 episodes put together in the late spring/summer and another 13 in the fall to make up a 26 episode television season.
This station promo below was uploaded in 2010 but I decided to embed it here, too. I may have embedded this back then but it's been nearly 3 years ago! From the sound of the promo it appears that Hee Haw was just starting to air for the first time on that station. The clip is from some point in the early to mid '80s. I assume the station aired the show on a delayed basis considering the official airtime for new episodes was 6pm locally in Nashville, Tennessee each Saturday evening and on this channel it aired at 4:30pm on Saturdays. In my area it most often aired throughout much of the 1980's at 7pm on Saturday and then it moved to the afternoons in the early 1990's.
Good Monday morning...I caught the latest episode of Hee Haw this morning on RFD-TV. It originally aired on the channel Sunday night at 8pm but I caught the re-airing this morning at 10am. The guests were Ernest Borgnine and it featured George Lindsey as a guest as well as Lulu Roman. Lindsey had been a recurring cast member since 1972, often appearing in the Goober character made famous on The Andy Griffith Show, and on this week's episode he appeared as Goober in a brief sketch with Gordie Tapp. The show aired for the very first time on September 14, 1974. It was the first episode of the 1974-1975 season. As many readers of this blog series are aware, RFD-TV airs the show in chronological order, and then it goes into a repeat cycle before the next season of shows air. As a result, RFD-TV is airing episodes that have never been broadcast since that point in time. In the 1990's The Nashville Network aired repeats of the show and there were a lot of mid '70s episodes shown but even more were from the early to mid '80s.
As far as the music goes for this episode we had Buck Owens performing the comical "It's a Monster's Holiday"; The Hager Twins sang a song titled "Cherry Pie", at least that's what I assume the title is since it was repeated frequently; Roy Clark performed "Honeymoon Feeling"; Ernest Borgnine, in a group sing-a-long, performed "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover"; Buck also performed "Pure Love". George Lindsey sang a novelty titled "I Like Ugly Girls", featuring Roni Stoneman in her Ida Lee characterization. There was a banjo performance featuring Roy Clark, Buck Trent, Grandpa Jones, Roni Stoneman, and Bobby Thompson. Earlier there was a brief performance featuring Buck Trent on the banjo and Roy Clark playing the fiddle. Lulu Roman closed the show singing a gospel song.
In the comical sketch department we had Roy Clark as western hero, Randolph Roy. In this sketch we saw George Lindsey and Gailard Sartain cast as villains of a western town. Archie Campbell played the bartender, Gordie Tapp portrayed his philosophical character, while Ernest Borgnine played the bar's piano player. Borgnine's character was shot and died in a comically elaborate fashion...causing Lindsey to look into the camera and make reference to Borgnine's award winning reputation. Also on hand were the Gossip Girls sketch plus Lulu's Truck Stop; Grandpa and Minnie's Kitchen; The Naggers; Pickin' and Grinnin'; Justice O'Peace; Archie's Barber Shop; The Moonshiner's; Pffft! You Was Gone!; Minnie's School House; Doc Campbell; Gloom, Despair, and Agony; Gordie, as a city slicker, attempting to mock and tease Goober; plus there were the usual silent sight gags and animated characters popping up on screen. Empty Arms Hotel had an appearance as did Junior's Used Cars and the sketch with Minnie and her quilt. Kenny Price was featured as a train station clerk, a role he'd play with much more frequency in later years.
One of the things that was a bit out of the ordinary is the opening sketch with Roy and Ernest Borgnine. It played prior to the show's official opening. It featured the two on the Moonshiner's set, concluding with a line from Borgnine referring to his guest appearance on the show, and then the familiar opening was underway.
Well, good Wednesday afternoon!! I came across an article about Hee-Haw that was published on February 27th this year...it's a lengthy, respectful write-up/article about the show as a whole. The article, as I found out when I read the entire thing, was originally written in early January of 2011, though! It's still a good article. I didn't research my previous Hee-Haw blog entries to see if I'd posted a link to that particular article or not and so I'm going to post the link in this blog entry. The article appears on a site called thislandpress and the article's written by an author named Jeff Martin.
I hesitate to embed Hee-Haw videos on my blog pages due to the ever-changing availability of them through the course of time. I did a blog entry a couple of years back and embedded quite a few You Tube videos of the show...only to visit the blog several weeks later to find the videos unavailable for play-back. Either the video's uploader had removed them from public display (disabling the embedding feature) or they were taken down by the uploader for whatever reason. When this happens it creates a void for any blog entry that embeds a video clip...once the centerpiece of a blog entry is removed (such as an embedded video) then the blog entry itself makes little sense.
Anyway...that's a big reason why I don't embed too many videos anymore in my blogs. However, I'm going to break my unwritten rule on today's blog entry and embed a video clip from the late '80s era of the show. As many blog readers of mine are aware of, I grew up watching Hee-Haw every Saturday evening in the '80s...and when it was moved to Saturday afternoons, to make way for the Saturday evening additions of a couple of game shows, I'd catch it often. So I was raised on the '80s and early '90s installments of the show. The Cowboy Quartet didn't gain as much commercial popularity as The Hee-Haw Gospel Quartet did but nevertheless The Cowboy Quartet had a recurring segment on the show in the late '80s. I came across a newer video clip of this quartet and the content is below...
As you can see from the video, this is one of the final episodes of the rural format. I have no idea, though, when it was originally aired but I see that Jeff Smith is among the singers. At the start of the clip you'll see the last few seconds of a Gailard Sartain sketch where he played an owner of a flea market ever trying to break into the music business...but the camera would always pull away every time he'd whip out his guitar. Cathy Baker introduces the Quartet. Judging by the appearances of the cast-members (physical appearances, hairstyles) it looks as if this clip comes from the 1989-1990 or 1990-1991 season.
As I commented on in the previous Hee-Haw blog entries I've written, the reruns that TNN and later, CMT, aired of the show were mostly from the '80s and a precious few from the final 1990-1991 rural season. TNN once aired the Alan Jackson episode...at the time it was one of the few latter-day episodes of the series to be re-aired. The reason why I like to spotlight the show's mid '80s and early '90s run as much as possible is because #1 that's the era of the program I grew up seeing every weekend. I'll always have a fondness for those episodes. The second reason I like to spotlight those episodes is because I think, sometimes, those particular episodes get a bad wrap because they don't feature the core line-up as they're referred to by many, many fans of the show. That core line-up that's usually referred to often contained comics/entertainers that were no longer among the living by the late '80s: Archie Campbell, Junior Samples, Jimmy Riddle, and Kenny Price. Stringbean, one of the show's most popular earlier cast-members, was murdered in November 1973. His episodes were still airing each weekend (all of his segments had been taped in the late summer of 1973). On the show, which he'd been on since it's 1969 debut, he appeared in many banjo musical numbers and had a recurring sketch where he'd read a "letter from home". Also, he appeared as the scarecrow in the Kornfield joke segment, offering one-liners about how miserable he was having to listen to all the corny jokes. A black crow puppet was perched over his shoulder. After his murder, the new shows from 1974 onward featured a scarecrow in the Kornfield as a memorial. The black crow puppet continued to appear as before. Those earliest episodes which feature Stringbean currently air on RFD-TV.
Meanwhile...getting back to the mid '80s...co-host Buck Owens had left the program after the 1985-1986 season wrapped up...on top of that there was what the show's producer, Sam Lovullo, refers to as the great cast shake-up of 1986 which saw the exits of quite a few long-time cast-members.
When the show returned in the fall of 1986 it was considerably different, cast-wise, but there were still a lot of familiar faces as well: Roy Clark, Gordie Tapp, Gunilla Hutton, Grandpa Jones, Lulu Roman, George Lindsey, Gailard Sartain, etc. etc. Also, the guest co-host position was introduced at the start of the 1986-1987 season. This was a popular addition but it was ultimately phased out by the start of the 1990-1991 season. In it's final season, of rural decor, Roy Clark was the sole host of the program. He was back as the host when the series returned in January 1992 in the urbanized setting under the slightly different name, The Hee-Haw Show. This was the format that aired until May 1992...which ultimately lead to the program going out of production that summer. Hee-Haw Silver premiered in the fall of 1992 and it ran through the spring of 1993. Afterwards reruns of the show began airing on The Nashville Network in the fall of 1993. Reruns continued to air on TNN on a consistent basis through 1996...and occasionally through 1997. They aired on CMT infrequently after that before the series left the airwaves entirely...popping up in a series of DVD's from Time-Life. The program returned to the airwaves, in rerun form, in 2008 on RFD-TV where it's been airing ever since.
In this particular Hee-Haw blog entry I'm focusing on an upcoming salute to the series that'll air in January 2012 on RFD-TV. The special is titled Salute to the Kornfield...at the moment I have no idea the running time of the special. I can't wait to see it...it'll feature recent interviews with a lot of the surviving cast-members of the show and I imagine there will be a lot of remembrances and memorials/tributes given to those who've passed away.
Before anyone can say "Great...but I don't get RFD-TV!!!" the great news is there's going to be a mammoth DVD collection which will feature the program that airs in January 2012 in addition to footage that didn't make it on the air. The DVD collection will cost a person a little more than $80.00 but it'll be well worth it not only for the interviews and memories but for it's historical value in the years to come.
Information about the DVD collection, which contains 5 discs in all, can be found by clicking the RFD-TV link. 4 discs will be housed in a standard DVD case while the 5th disc called Backstage will be housed in a separate case. You'll see the look and design and the price after you click the above link.
The reruns of the show that air on RFD-TV, in a lot of ways, is responsible for this reunion. Word of mouth and social media have created awareness for the reruns and in a lot of cases the program was discovered by younger audiences, too, who weren't even born when Hee-Haw aired it's last episode in 1992.
The program originally aired on CBS-TV for 2 and a half seasons, 1969-1971, and in syndication for 22 more seasons, 1971-1992. When the show ceased production of new episodes in 1992, at the end of it's 24th season, the program returned later that year as Hee-Haw Silver to commemorate it's 25 seasons on the air. That program was a retrospective series airing flashbacks of older episodes which ran through 1993...concluding it's 25 year run.
I find it thrilling that the program still has such a strong fan-base...but it's not surprising. Practically anything associated with Hee-Haw has turned a profit or helped networks increase their ratings. In the '90s The Nashville Network aired reruns of the show for nearly 5 years straight starting in 1993...months after Hee-Haw Silver concluded it's syndicated run.
One example of it's profitability being the series of Time Life DVD collections spread out over a period of several years. Those DVD's, I think, filled the void left when The Nashville Network abruptly stopped airing the reruns and the DVD releases increased the demand for more episodes. I say the DVD successes eventually led to the program's rerun debut on the RFD-TV network in 2008...where it's been airing ever since. The network is currently airing the 1972-1973 season.
Once again...the reunion of Hee-Haw will air in January 2012 and the DVD counterpart is available for pre-order at the web-link I posted up in the third paragraph.
In this on-going series of blogs I've touched upon the fact that 2009 marked the 40th anniversary of Hee-Haw's debut on CBS in 1969. 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of the program's re-launch into syndication. After CBS canceled the series in 1971 it went into first-run syndication later in the year and it remained in first-run syndication for the next 21 years (through May 1992). The follow-up series, Hee-Haw Silver, ran from the fall of 1992 through 1993. If you're familiar with that particular program let me know about it. I'd only heard about it but never saw any of those episodes. I know Roy Clark acted as host and Cathy Baker appeared at the end of each episode to say her signature sign-off line...but I learned of that from reading the Life in the Kornfield book that Sam Lovullo wrote in the mid '90s. I don't think the Hee-Haw Silver series will ever be uploaded onto You Tube or made available on DVD anytime soon...but I'm still interested in seeing the program.
Sunday evening's Hee-Haw episode on RFD-TV featured Connie Smith and Tommy Ambrose as special guests. It was the final episode of the 1971-1972 season (it's first season in syndication). Next Sunday's episode should be episode 1 of the 1972-1973 season or episode 2. I say this because a couple of months ago they aired the first episode of the 1972-1973 season (Ray Stevens and Dizzy Dean were the guests) and so they may skip that and pick up with episode 2. The 1972 season opener, by the way, featured the debuts of cast-members Marianne Gordon, Misty Rowe, Anne Randall, and Gailord Sartain (dressed as a cop). George Lindsey began making infrequent appearances on the program in 1972. He played the Goober character that he'd been playing since 1964 on The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD. Lindsey, however, didn't appear in the opening cast credits of Hee-Haw until several weeks into his run. He'd remain on the series through it's final episode in May 1992 and often appeared at Hee-Haw related functions in the years following it's cancellation. In 1995 he released his life story called Goober in a Nut-Shell and it became a runaway success. Also, it was at this point in time where Lindsey was in the middle of commemorating his 30th anniversary as 'Goober'.
Over the course of the last several weeks during the Hee-Haw reruns on RFD-TV they've been airing commercials that were taped at the recent get-together of the cast. The commercials feature cast-members saying who they are, often standing in front of a replica Hee-Haw prop, and thanking the viewers for watching the reruns.
Given that this is the fifth installment of my Hee-Haw blog it shouldn't come to nobody's surprise that I love the show! I can't really give an opinion of it's 24th season in 1992 because I've never really seen it but judging by things I've read through the years it wasn't what the doctor ordered...the overhaul of the show's image and the termination of long-running sketches and cast members...it was a mistake. The thing that made the show was it's look...as well as the corny jokes...also, the energetic banter among the cast and whatever guest stars were on the show that week. When the show debuted in 1969 it was met with a lot of harsh criticism not only from big city television critics but also music critics within country music. The country music industry was wanting to push the label of 'Country and Western' which sounded more marketable. Hee-Haw stood in sharp contrast to that marketing idea because of it's heavy use of haybales, farmer's daughter wardrobes, bib overalls and other rural imagery that pushed the 'Hillbilly' image that the country music big-wigs on Music Row were wanting to distance itself from. The enormous success of the show meant that the program would continue to air; and after it's cancellation by CBS in 1971, it went into first-run syndication and would remain a syndicated program for the rest of it's life-span.
Season One: June 15, 1969 - September 7, 1969
Season Two: December 17, 1969 - April 8, 1970
Season Three: September 15, 1970 - February 23, 1971
Season Four: September 18, 1971 - April 1, 1972
Season Five: September 16, 1972 - March 24, 1973
Season Six: September 15, 1973 - March 23, 1974
Season Seven: September 14, 1974 - March 8, 1975
Season Eight: September 17, 1975 - March 13, 1976
Season Nine: September 18, 1976 - March 26, 1977
Season Ten: September 17, 1977 - March 25, 1978
Season Eleven: September 16, 1978 - March 24, 1979
Season Twelve: September 15, 1979 - March 22, 1980
Season Thirteen: September 13, 1980 - March 21, 1981
Season Fourteen: September 12, 1981 - March 30, 1982
Season Fifteen: September 11, 1982 - March 19, 1983
Season Sixteen: September 17, 1983 - March 17, 1984
Season Seventeen: September 22, 1984 - March 16, 1985
Season Eighteen: September 21, 1985 - March 15, 1986
Season Nineteen: September 20, 1986 - March 28, 1987*
Season Twenty: September 19, 1987 - May 21, 1988**
Season Twenty-One: October 1, 1988 - May 20, 1989**
Season Twenty-Two: September 16, 1989 - March 24, 1990
Season Twenty-Three: September 15, 1990 - February 23, 1991***
Season Twenty-Four: January 4, 1992 - May 30, 1992^^
Season Twenty-Five: September 1992 - April 1993****
*-beginning with the 19th season, Roy Clark was joined each week by a different guest co-host.
**-There were no episodes that aired during the month of March during these production cycles. As a result, the season expanded further into the spring, to make up for the loss of air-dates.
^^-After the rural/backwoods version of the show was canceled in February 1991, the show went on a hiatus while producers/advertisers behind the scenes were plotting a new urban twist to the show. The new citified version of the show began in January 1992, the show's 24th season. The outcry from fans was so severe that the show went out of production in May upon the conclusion of it's 24th season.
***-Roy Clark became the solo host beginning with season 23.
****-This is the season known as Hee-Haw Silver to commemorate the program's 25th season in syndication. Roy Clark gave intro's for each rerun while Cathy Baker appeared with new recordings of her sign-off line, "That's All!!". After the Silver series wrapped up in the spring of 1993 reruns began to surface on The Nashville Network for a period of time.
A lot of the reruns that TNN aired were the late 1970's and early 1980's episodes. At one point in time TNN's Saturday night line-up was must-see television: Hee-Haw from 7-8pm; Opry Backstage from 8pm to 8:30pm; The Grand Ole Opry from 8:30pm-9pm; and the Statler Brothers show from 9pm-10pm.
After the reruns left TNN they began to air infrequently on CMT.
There was never a serious effort on CMT's part to air the show and as a fan I felt insulted by the way CMT treated the program by not airing it on any consistent basis. TNN eventually ended it's run of country music oriented programming in 2000. It was renamed The National Network and consisted of reruns of mostly 1980's television programs. Later on the network was renamed again to Spike TV.
Hee-Haw currently airs Sunday nights at 8pm eastern on RFD-TV. The episode replays on Monday mornings at 10am eastern. The reruns that air are typically the earliest of episodes from 1969-1971. I've yet to see an episode on RFD-TV from the late '70s or the 1980's. I hope they start to air those episodes, too.
Howdy ever'body! Welcome to part four in this Hee-Haw blog series. Part Three was published on this blog many months ago...almost a year ago...where I spotlighted a couple of DVD's that Time-Life had released. Several weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my cable provider now carries RFD-TV! This is excellent news because this is the channel that airs Hee-Haw on Sunday nights at 8pm. The show repeats on Monday morning at 10am. I've watched the show at 10am but I don't have that same feeling that I do watching the show in the evening hours...even though the 10am Monday morning airing is a repeat of the 8pm episode the night before. I guess that has to do with all those years watching the show at 7pm back when it was still in production. I do remember catching the show in 1991 during Saturday and, or, Sunday afternoon...so having it air in the daytime isn't unheard of...I just prefer watching it in the evening hours.
The episode that aired tonight, January 31st, featured Loretta Lynn and Bill Anderson as guests. Susan Raye, a regular cast-member and frequent duet partner with Buck Owens, sang a song as did hosts Buck Owens and Roy Clark and twin cast-members Jim and Jon Hager. Loretta sang "Coal Miner's Daughter" and "Secret Love"; Bill Anderson sang "Wild Weekend" and "I Love You, Drops". Susan Raye sang her Top-10 hit, "Willy Jones". The Hagers sang "Looking Out My Backdoor", a Creedence Clearwater Revival hit. The episode originally aired on February 2, 1971.
I have 11 of those Time-Life DVD's of Hee-Haw. I'm holding up 10 of them. An 11th wasn't able to be in the shot...as you can see I had a difficult enough time trying to keep them from falling from the stack...so I took the 11th DVD from the stack and snapped a picture real quick. Some of those DVD's have two episodes on them and several have just one episode. There is a 5-disc set called A Salute to Hee-Haw that is rather pricey. It's running time is 480 minutes altogether. I was never able to purchase it. It features 4 DVD's with 2 episodes per disc which adds up to 8 episodes and then a 5th disc which features interviews with some of the surviving cast members of the show.
Although I wish I had the 5-DVD release, I'm happy with the DVD's that I have so I'm not complaining...and the fact that I now get RFD-TV where I can see the show each Sunday evening is also a plus!! If I had my way, though, the show would air every weeknight at 7pm and I'd mix the episodes around. One evening have a show from 1970 and the next night have a show from 1984 and then the next night have something from 1972 and then an episode from 1989, etc etc. The 5-DVD collection is sold-out at Amazon and at Wal*Mart's web-site store...and I did a search at Time-Life's web-site and couldn't find any reference to Hee-Haw on their site. I did a product search and it came up empty so they must have stopped offering these DVD's. The 5-DVD set was released in 2006...much of the DVD's were released in 2004, 2005, and 2006...it certainly doesn't seem like it's been 4 years ago...in some cases 6!!
This is the DVD release of the only episode of Hee-Haw that George Strait appeared on. The episode originally aired on November 12, 1983 and at the time Strait was an emerging superstar...having been on the national scene a little over 2 years. In that short span of time he had racked up several consecutive Top-5 hits on his way to a hugely successful career...with over 50 #1 country hits and election into the Country Music Hall of Fame 23 years later in 2006. The Statler Brothers are the other guests on this episode and there have been some consumers upset over what they consider over-kill by the Statler Brothers. Some of the commentary I came across regarding this DVD included anger over how many sketches were centered around the group. I never saw anything wrong with the episode myself. The show's producer, Sam Lovullo, always wanted guests who loved to do the comedy sketches. Some artists shied away from doing too much comedy and they only shown up to sing. So, to my way of thinking, since the Statler Brothers are hilarious and have a comedic side to them, having them appear in the comedy sketches on the show seemed natural so you'll get no complaints from me.
Hee-Haw had a lot of merchandising during it's early years. There were lunch boxes and comic books and a magazine. The show also became popular for some of the women cast-members, known collectively as the Hee-Haw Honey's. Through all of my years watching the show and knowing of the show I can say that there was never anything blatantly off-color or dirty when it came to the Hee-Haw Honey aspect...there was and there's always been a critical disdain for the show as a whole because of it becoming a hit. Country music itself was never really considered mainstream to begin with...and here you had a TV program reaching millions of people each week not only spotlighting country music, but also bluegrass and gospel in addition to the corny jokes...there were a lot of people angry that the show was a success.
And so, male viewers no doubt appreciated seeing the women on the show...there was a look to a Hee-Haw Honey...each of them wore usually the same style of clothing: short shorts and tight t-shirts. This was several years before Dukes of Hazzard came along so they weren't called 'Daisy Dukes' at the time...but you get the idea. Gunilla Hutton, Misty Rowe, Lisa Todd, Linda Thompson, Jeannine Riley, and Marianne Rogers were the more notable of the Hee-Haw Honey's although just about all of the women were put under the Honey umbrella. The women who were not considered a "Honey" were Roni Stoneman, Minnie Pearl, and Lulu Roman...these women were mostly cast as eccentric or bizarre characters and not known or thought of as eye candy...whereas with Minnie, she played the role she'd been playing at the Opry for years as the older woman trying to find a companion.
Barbi Benton was on the program in the early to mid 1970's. She is more widely known for her Playboy-related appearances instead of being a Hee-Haw Honey given her connection to Hugh Hefner. She was Hefner's girlfriend for eight years...Barbi left Hee-Haw in 1976, the same year she and Hefner broke up...and she continued to appear in various TV programs throughout the 1970's and 1980's.
As for Linda Thompson, she was once a part of Elvis Presley's inner circle...she was his girlfriend during his later years. You can look her images up on-line and see a lot of pictures of her taken at Graceland.
She was married to Bruce Jenner in the early '80s and in the episodes of the show in the early 1980's she's referred to as Linda Thompson-Jenner and she was also married to David Foster, having married him in 1991, but she separated from him in 2005. Linda was on the show from 1976 through 1992.
Linda's recurring skit involved playing the daughter of Kenny Price. The routine often started showing a haystack and you'd hear a lazy harmonica playing and Linda would sigh "Paw..." and Kenny, usually raking hay, would turn and say something like "yes, daughter" and she'd go on to him about her problems with her boyfriend, known as Billy Bob. By the end of the routine she'd slip out some sort of secret and go "oops" to which Kenny would storm off huffing and puffing saying things like "i'm gonna kill him!".
Linda, as well as other Honey's, were often seen in a routine known just as "the Haystack" where the camera would show the shot of a haystack and then drop down to show one of the Honey's and usually Jim or Jon Hager...sometimes Buck Owens...acting as a boyfriend to one of the Honey's of the show.
Irlene Mandrell was one of the Hee-Haw Honey's as well. On the show she typically played the Kornfield Kounty telephone operator. She could also be seen in the All-Jug band and for a short period of time she was one of the women in the exercise skit where a few women would be shown exercising and telling jokes back and forth. Irlene was on the show from 1984 to 1992.
The Hee-Haw Honey's were spun off into their own program, titled obviously "The Hee-Haw Honeys". In this series several of the show's cast played character's with the last name of Honey. Kathie Lee Gifford, not a part of the Hee-Haw show, was cast in this series. She played Kathie Honey. Gailord Sartain was on the show as Willie Billy Honey. Kenny Price and Lulu Roman were like the parental figures. The show ran for one season.
Lulu was one of the big parts of the show. In addition to her being in The Culhanes skit she was also in the All-Jug band plus she was often one of the gossipers in the Rumors skit. Her signature skit was "Lulu's Truckstop" where she played a sassy waitress and Gailard Sartain played the cook/romantic interest, Orville. The food served there was awful...in one scene in a later episode Dub Taylor complained that just being in the place was giving him indigestion before having eaten anything.
Another aspect of this series were the animated animals that often popped up on screen. In addition to the animated donkey which appeared at the start and close of every episode you also had various farm animals that would comment on the jokes being told. A duck or a pig would hold up signs reacting to the joke...much like the coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. They often used a cow or a donkey as commercial bumpers, too. A goat was often seen chewing up the show's title only for him to hiccup and the title would be shown in reverse and then he'd look at the camera and go "Hee-Haw will be right ba-a-a-a-c-c-c-k!". If the show ran bloopers, for example, they'd show a cow holding up a sign reading "they're milking this joke". Bloopers often happened as part of the cornfield segment when people would pop up and start to talk but mess up their lines...in Junior's case he couldn't pronounce a lot of big words and so they'd tape him trying to say all kinds of words and insert it into the show. In one example, Grandpa Jones broke a string on his banjo while taping a performance. On any other show this scene would never have made it on the air...but on Hee-Haw not only was the blooper shown, but the camera taped Grandpa fumbling with the banjo and arguing with it as he put a new string on it.
When Reverend Grady Nutt was a cast-member, he'd tell stories inside Archie Campbell's barbershop set. After his skit was through, typically you'd see the scene cut to an animated donkey holding up a sign that read "Let us Bray". Of course, a lot of acts got the dancing pig treatment. if a song was a sing-a-long or if one of the show's own cast-members were performing a song, it wasn't uncommon to see a row of dancing pigs come dancing along the screen kicking their legs. This happened during a Hank Williams, Jr song...another instance was when Kenny Price was singing "Crawdad Hole".
In addition to the Hee-Haw gospel quartet, the show also featured the Million Dollar Band. This segment would become a fan-favorite as well...it included Roy Clark, Chet Atkins, Johnny Gimble, Floyd Cramer, Boots Randolph, Jethro Burns, and Danny Davis. Charlie McCoy, the show's musical director and a harmonica player, was often featured in music pieces like this, as well, where only music was played, no singing.
The Hee-Haw Salute was one of the recurring routines that would appear twice or three times during a show. Roy Clark or Buck Owens during the early episodes would mention a city or town in America and salute it...sometimes this was done for comedy and they would spotlight a town with a population of 28 or something. The routine would go something like this:
Hee-Haw salutes Dusty Trail, Texas; population 58
Then the camera would pan to the cornfield where everyone would in unison holler "SALUTE!" but in rural speech it would sound like "SA-LOOT!". Not all of the salute's would be comical...some towns were major cities with thousands and thousands of people. Also, personalities from local TV stations that aired Hee-Haw would stop by for a visit and the local town was saluted in that segment.
The great cast shake up of 1986 was when the show let go a lot of their cast-members except a handful. Buck Owens was not among those being let go but he wanted out of the show and so when the 1986 season opened up, there was no Buck Owens as co-host. Instead, the show began a policy of guest co-hosts each week with Roy Clark. The guest co-host or co-hosts depending on if it were a duo, would fill-in during Buck Owens' routines...the sing-a-long's and musical numbers that had become fan favorites. This guest co-host policy remained until the end of the 1989-1990 season. Afterward, Roy hosted the show by himself, 1990-1992.
Changes were made throughout 1986-1988 and a lot of it had to do with the deaths of two long-running cast-members: Kenny Price and Archie Campbell. The two of them passed away in 1987...so that was two more losses, in addition to the others who were let go in 1986, in addition to Buck leaving the cast. The show continued on just as before...largely due to the fact that a lot of recurring skit's and routines were being inserted into the show with more frequency...with the Hee-Haw Salute, for example, airing up to four times throughout one episode...Roy's quick "Empty Arms Hotel" skit would sometimes air three times during the hour...but then there were some new skits popping up every so often, too. Kenny Price passed away between production cycles and so he continued to be featured as a cast-member into 1988 with material he taped before his death.
The cast members let go in 1986 were Don Harron, Lisa Todd, The Hager Twins, and without Buck Owens as a co-host his back-up group, The Buckaroos, left the show in 1986 as well. Jackie Phelps passed away and so he of course was no longer featured on the show from 1986 onward. Jackie had been featured as the bartender in the "Hee-Haw Honky Tonk" skit plus in the early years he was a comedy partner of Jimmy Riddle, the two of them billed on the show as Riddle and Phelps.
Critics and historians like to say that Hee-Haw was losing their audience during 1990-1991 in a way that suggests viewers were tuning the show out but I say the show never lost it's audience voluntarily...I believe the show lost affiliate stations, and that would drive audience numbers down because less people were seeing the show than before. Here where I live the local stations stopped airing the show in 1991...so I never got to see the last season. I know some area's stopped carrying the show in 1990 and some in 1989...so with stations dropping the program it's no wonder ratings started to suffer...but I don't believe audiences were turning the show off themselves as critics would have you believe.
The producers of the show, amidst station loss and the stunning sales hikes of country music in the early 1990's with it's rock/pop overtones, had no choice but to revamp the program because for the first time in the show's history it's rural imagery and purposely cornball approach was seen as more hurtful than helpful by a whole host of "new country" singers popping up during this time period refusing to appear on the show because of it's "look" and potentially harmful effect an appearance could have on their career. About the show's look: an episode from 1991 could easily be shown back-to-back with a show from 1981...the look and formula of the show was that consistent year after year.
Several new additions came to the show during the 1989-1990 season and in 1990, Phil Campbell joined the show. After the 1990-1991 season wrapped up, word was sent that everyone except a few were going to be dropped from the show. Those who were dropped from the show were many: Roni Stoneman, Marianne Rogers, Cathy Baker, Dub Taylor, Mike Snider, Jeff Smith, Vicki Byrd, Misty Rowe, Terry Sanders, Minnie Pearl. Dub Taylor came aboard in 1985 while Jeff Smith came along in 1984 and Mike Snider joined the show in 1987. Vicki Byrd had joined the show in 1989 playing the quirky, confused type. Minnie Pearl had been a part of the show since 1971...Roni Stoneman was another long-time cast member let go as were Gunilla Hutton, Misty Rowe, and Marianne Rogers. Williams and Ree, a comedy duo who gained their popularity on The Nashville Network, was a part of the show during 1989-1991. Terry Sanders was often seen in Minnie's "Grinders Switch Gazette" skit playing an office boy...his tenure on the show was 1989-1991 as well. The last episode of the old Hee-Haw as fans refer to it was in July 1991.
You may be asking...with so many cast members let go at the end of the 1991 season, who was left? There were a few people left standing plus they brought in newcomers...
Roy Clark remained as the show's host. Grandpa Jones, Gordie Tapp, Lulu Roman, George Lindsay, Irlene Mandrell, Linda Thompson, Gailard Sartain, Charlie McCoy, and Phil Campbell all returned in 1992.
The new additions were unknowns pretty much. Gary Mule Deer, one of the new cast-members, gained some fame as a stand-up comedian. There was also a pair of women known as The Norris Twins...and some others...but they never aired the program in wide distribution so I can't make a decision either way since I'd never seen any of the 1992 episodes...but with the cornfield gone and other parts of the show that were fan favorites eliminated, I don't believe the program should have kept the name of Hee-Haw since the very name of the show suggested country life, cornfields, donkeys, haystacks, etc etc.
The 1992 episodes, which began airing in January 1992, were not aired here but from what I read, the episodes angered the viewers who didn't want to see these changes and wanted the "old Hee-Haw" back. Sam Lovullo recounts this period in time and the entire show from start to finish in his book, Life in the Kornfield.
After these 1992 episodes aired and were repeated, the show went out of production for good...re-runs of the show returned in the fall of 1992 under the name of "Hee-Haw Silver". These special episodes were designed to commemorate the program's 25th season on the air.
There were 52 episodes of this Silver series...each hosted by Roy Clark and featuring Cathy Baker aired during the 1992-1993 television season. Afterward, the show became an on-again/off-again show for TNN and later, CMT. On TNN they aired reruns on a frequent basis: Saturday nights at 10pm following "The Statler Brothers Show". Ultimately, though, the reruns were taken off the air and shifted to CMT...and it's here that the show aired infrequently. Time Life got into the act around this time...they had begun promoting a VHS home video called Hee-Haw Laffs during the show's rerun life on TNN. An Opryland production called Hee-Haw Live had been a success during this same time period. The VHS compilation arrived in 1996...the show continued to pop-up in reruns on TNN and later, CMT, through 1998 when it appeared to have aired for a final time...but fast-forward a decade to 2008...
By this time the show had become a sales success on Time Life through a series of DVD's...and RFD-TV took notice of the audience that the show continued to pull in. One of the unique things about Hee-Haw today is a lot of the fans of the show are young people who had often heard about the show from their parents or grandparents and checked the show out for themselves through the DVD's and various clips that appear on video hosting sites. No doubt the dated look appeals to nostalgia buffs; and, the personalities who starred on the show and the guests have some historical value among country music circles. Some of this latter-day praise is for it's simplicity as compared to the complex and complicated forms of entertainment on TV now...others simply find the show fascinating to watch...remember, the under 30 crowd of today were barely into their teens when the show was leaving the air...so there's not a nostalgia feel for the show from that age-group. I first saw the show when I was 5 or 6...it was the early 1980's. I grew up with this show in the background...every Saturday was Hee-Haw at 7pm.
The program is currently airing in reruns on the RFD-TV channel. The air-time is 8pm Sunday nights and it repeats at 10am Monday mornings. There have been a series of DVD's released by Time Life of the program as I made mention of...so for those who want to have some of the episodes in your personal collection you should seek the DVD's out until RFD-TV becomes more available.
Hee-Haw was one of my favorite television programs and it had a long, successful run before ending production in 1992. The program is rather polarizing because you can have millions of people praising the show and then you could have just as many wondering why the show was a success. This sort of fever-pitch for or against runs rampant today as it did when the program was on the air. Hee-Haw came along in 1969 as a replacement show. CBS-TV replaced The Smothers Brothers Show with Hee-Haw and right from the start there was a reaction, both pro and con. The series did so well that it became a weekly series. The production cycle of the show was rather unique...it would tape all of it's content in bits and pieces and the editing department would piece the shows together. The music numbers for the season were all taped in one taping session...the comedy skits were all performed in one session..and so forth. It took usually two months in the summer to record material for a season's worth of shows...and then in the fall everyone returned to tape material for the following season, that's how well-oiled the show's production unit was, but when the sessions were completed the editors would piece together one episode at a time.
As you can see from that early cast-member shot, Roy Clark and Buck Owens were the co-hosts. The rest of the people were cast-members ranging from comics to members of back-up groups on the show. It was a country version of Laugh-In with a high emphasis on cornball humor and rural situations...but unlike Laugh-In, Hee-Haw would feature two or three guest stars each episode performing country music. As the show became an enormous hit, a typical episode would have at least 5 guests and even guest stars from other TV shows that stopped by...people who had nothing to do with country music dropped in from time to time.
The series gained a loyal audience during the 1969-1970 seasons but trouble was brewing behind the scenes at CBS. They wanted their network to be a place for youthful programs...entertainment that had a topical feel almost. CBS was at the time the home to a lot of country and rural programs that pulled in monster ratings but the age group that the shows were pulling in were not what CBS or mainstream advertisers were wanting. After the 1970-1971 season, CBS made the decision to rid it's line-up of all of the country shows currently in production: Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry RFD, and Hee-Haw are the stand-out programs. On another network, Lawrence Welk's long-running TV series came to an end in 1971 for much of the same demographic reasons the country shows faced. Red Skelton, a long time fixture on TV since 1951, saw his series come to an end in 1971 as well.
Skelton would continue appearing on TV and do personal appearances for decades after his show ended. Lawrence Welk and his company went into first-run syndication as did Hee-Haw. The decision had been made to continue the show off-network...with local affiliates airing the program usually in it's same time-slot, Saturday night at 7pm, Eastern Time, 6pm in Nashville. Viewers, of course, had no idea that the show was not on the network anymore...for them, the show was airing just as before.
Lawrence Welk's show often ran in competition with Hee-Haw and in some places they aired back-to-back...from one extreme musical taste to the next. A lot of cast in the early days on CBS were not on hand when the show moved into first-run syndication...the show hit it's core line-up fairly early and with the additions of a few more key players the cast would remain intact for the next 10 years or so. Among the most celebrated of the Hee-Haw cast were the following cast-members:
1. Archie Campbell: He was credited with being one of the show's main writers, typically writing the material for himself and others in the skits in which he was the star. Archie was also noted as a painter plus he was a member of the Grand Ole Opry. He died in 1987, working on Hee-Haw from 1969 right up through 1987. Archie starred in several skits with "Doc Campbell" being one of the most popular due to it co-starring Gunilla Hutton as Nurse Goodbody. There was also a long running skit with him as a barber and another one with him as a judge...in addition to this, Archie often introduced the serious segment at the end of the show, the Hee-Haw gospel quartet.
2. Junior Samples: This cast-member became notorious for bloopers and reading his cue-cards wrong because he couldn't pronounce a lot of the words that the writers would purposely have on the cue cards. Dick Clark once commented that Hee-Haw's deliberate airing of bloopers was years ahead of the blooper craze of the late 1970's when it seemed every network aired their own blooper specials. There was a time when he stopped messing up his lines because he genuinely wanted to be taken seriously...according to the show's producer, Sam Lovullo, once Junior saw episodes of the show with a serious display of himself he went back to messing up his lines because it was funnier. His long running skit involved him playing a car salesman, often with Misty Rowe as his assistant. He was also in the Culhanes skit as well. Junior passed away in 1983.
3. Gordie Tapp: This comedian came down from Canada, as did the show's creators, John Aylesworth and Frank Peppiatt. Gordie was like Archie when it came to writing. Gordie wrote pretty much his own material...his most popular contribution to the show was a domestic skit featuring a married couple who lived in a dump. The Naggers were exactly that...they both nagged at each other. Gordie played long-suffering husband, Laverne, who looked like he hadn't had a bath in weeks while Roni Stoneman played the wife, Ida Lee, who wore rags in her hair and was typically threatening to hit her husband with a rolling pin or an iron. Aside from this, Gordie was also in the skit that took place in a general store, often cast opposite Gailord Sartain. Also, Gordie was popular as the southern Colonel...whose spoiled daughter was played on the show by Marianne Rogers.
4. Grandpa Jones: This cast-member, like Archie Campbell, had a long career on radio and records and was also a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Grandpa, played by Louis Jones, was in his 20's when he started playing the Grandpa character. He often told the story of how a man in radio gave him the name of Grandpa because his voice during his early years sounded much older. So, Louis started dressing up as an old man with tiny reading glasses, a fake mustache, and older-style clothes...years later he joked that he doesn't need any make-up to play the part now. Grandpa Jones was a part of the Hee-Haw gospel quartet and he played in the Culhanes skit. He was often seen in the barbershop and was one of the drunks in the Moonshiner's skit. He was also in the "Gloom, Despair, and Agony" sing-a-long's as well. His most popular skit in which he was the star was the "What's For Supper?" routine where he'd be asked what's for supper and he'd recite something in rhyme. Often he'd be greeted with a YUM-YUM but on occasion if he didn't have much to offer, the response would be YUCK! Grandpa is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was on the show from the start until the end. He passed away in 1998 at the age of 84.
5. Don Harron: This cast-member came down from Canada and isn't remembered much by his actual name...but mention the character he played on Hee-Haw and you will no doubt get smiles. Don played newscaster Charlie Farqheson...who wore a beat-up grey sweater and flat cap...tiny reading glasses...and a four day beard. He'd deliver the news from KORN which was set inside a chicken coop...with bright orange egg crates decorating the place. His routine was to make commentary about a local news item and then he'd start to ramble and garble a lot of his phrases. A lot of the times he'd deliver "on-air" assessments of the news he was covering and say things that were so far off the wall that you could hear actual stage-hands laughing...sometimes he'd come really close to breaking up but he'd compose himself and continue on reading the nonsense. He'd end each "broadcast" by running his finger across his neck, sign language for "cut!". Don has hosted interview shows in Canada, as himself, in addition to appearing as his Hee-Haw character. He is still active to this day.
In addition to those five there was also the presence of Minnie Pearl. She came to the show in 1970 and remained with the program until 1991. George Lindsey, ironically, became a cast-member in 1972. The reason it's ironic is because he was a cast-member of "Mayberry RFD", a show that was canceled in 1971 by CBS. George continued playing his Goober Pyle role and eventually had a skit created for him that was set in a car repair shop. George Lindsey was with the show until the end. Kenny Price came aboard in 1976 and he would remain with the show until his death in 1987.
At the time of Hee-Haw's biggest years, there were other country programs on TV as well. These programs were in syndication and aired on the weekends. Porter Wagoner's TV show was never in competition with Hee-Haw, but it was one of the biggest country music shows on the air during Hee-Haw's life-span.
Another program that ran quite long was "Pop! Goes the Country" which Ralph Emery hosted for six years, before Tom T Hall took over during the show's last years. Ralph was at the helm from 1974-1980 and Tom T remained until 1982. Yet, another show that was very popular was "Nashville On the Road" which starred Jim Ed Brown and Jerry Clower. A lot of these syndicated country music shows were riding on the fame Hee-Haw had created with first-run syndication...by-passing the major networks. I'll pick up with part two of my Hee-Haw essay in a later blog entry.
