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#1
12-12-2003, 04:37 AM
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Hee Haw and "Yankees"
I am from Memphis, Tennessee. Every Saturday night from the early 1970s until probably the late 1980s we got a show called Hee-Haw starring Buck Owens and Roy Clark. There were many Opry Stars and legends like Grandpa Jones and Minnie pearl on this wonderful program. This was a show that fundies and southern liberals enjoyed together. It had some innocent sex humor, (hee-Haw honeys, like Hootler girls) but it was also somewhat conservative, with the country theme. many times they would even have a gospel number. they also did crap like "Hee Haw salutes my hometown Yeehaw, South Carolina, population 1,312. Saaa-loote! The cartoon mascot was a mule, the show even had a bloodhound.
If you are 30 and above and from the south and the mid-west, you know Hee-Haw. Hee-Haw was like a redneck laugh-in. I know Bill Clinton has seen it before, but I wonder if Howard Dean ever had? Thus is my query............................ My question, did stations in places like New York, Boston, San Francisco or Los Angeles carry this program? Were there Hee Haw fans in Manhattan, Harvard square, Castro Street, or the hood who liked this program? Was this show shown in Canada or elsewhere? If you liked Hee Haw outside of redneckville, admit it! SENOR 
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#2
12-12-2003, 04:40 AM
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Gloom, despair and agony on me,
deep dark depression, excessive misery if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all gloom, despair and agony on me.... Where oh where, are you tonight? why did you leave me here all alone? I searched the world over and thought I'd found true love, you met another and Pbbbt, you was gone... I'm from Mich, which isn't listed in your OP, but we used to get it. I watched it when I was really young, but kind of lost interest as I got older.
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#3
12-12-2003, 04:50 AM
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I forgot about that! My parents have a real to real recording of me doing that song when I was about 3-5.
I did not include Michigan, because Michigan is fairly rural. People in Michigan love football and love to hunt. Was Hee-Haw shown in New York, SF or LA? That's the question. SENOR
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#6
12-12-2003, 07:08 AM
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"Hee-Haw" was on for years in this neck of the woods. I'm not much of a music fan, but it was all presented well and they really did seem to be enjoying themselves. Thought most of the humor was good[remember radio station K-O-R-N?] and Granpa Jones' monologues.
I always assumed it aired all over the country. Were there any benighted areas that missed this? The redneck "Laugh-in" description is apt. Did the cast ever appear at the Grand Ol' Opry, or is the Opry reserved strictly for singers?
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#7
12-12-2003, 07:46 AM
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We saw it in Vermont. I'd quote my favorite part, but Odinoneeye beat me to it...
My favorite Hee-Haw gal was Maryanne Gordon, IIRC Kenny Rodger's wife... I recall a segment on "Laugh-in" where two CBS network executives were conferring behind a closed door: "OK, what are we going to call this new show? How about 'Laugh-In'?" "No, that one's taken. How about 'Hee-Haw'?" (Laugh-In ran on NBC)
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#11
12-12-2003, 09:41 AM
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Re: Hee Haw and "Yankees"
Quote:
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#13
12-12-2003, 10:12 AM
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Quote:
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#14
12-12-2003, 10:15 AM
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My mom didn't let me watch it because of the lay-dees. And lookie how good I turned out.
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#15
12-12-2003, 10:19 AM
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We watched Hee-Haw on AFRTS (American Forces Radio and Television Service) in Germany in the late 70s. Every kid in my elementary school knew all the words to "Where O Where Are You Tonight".
__________________
Pax et Bonum, Kizarvexius ________________________________________ ...Because you can't strike a Marquis de Queensbury pose and announce "I'm familiar with the art of fisticuffs!" in front of a bunch of lumberjacks and not expect to get your butt kicked. - Marlitharn
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#16
12-12-2003, 10:20 AM
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I don't know which markets it played in specifically, but I do recall Roy Clark boasting that the two most popular syndicated shows of the 1970s were Hee-haw and Lawrence Welk -- both after they had been canceled by their networks.
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#17
12-12-2003, 12:09 PM
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It was shown in Philly and my family watched it and I thought it was funny. What was that family, The Calhouns of something County, or something like that? That was my favorite bit. IIRC that bit always ended with Junior Samples saying "yup". My brother's and I used to sing that "doom despair and agony" song, and also the "where oh where are you tonight" song. We thought they were hilarious. I was always under the impression that it was syndicated nationally.
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#18
12-12-2003, 12:32 PM
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By the way... Does anyone else agree that Buck Owens was one of the homliest guys ever to walk the face of the earth. Man, did that guy EVER get beat by the ugly stick!
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#19
12-12-2003, 01:20 PM
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"Hey Grampa, what's for supper?"
A regular Hee-Haw viewer from New York checking in. But I'm guessing when you asked about New York, you meant Noo Yawk (the city not the state). I grew up in the northernmost part of the state, which is so rural we considered Vermonters to be sophisticated cityfolk.
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#20
12-12-2003, 03:54 PM
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I read a Bizarro cartoon about ten years ago that showed a guy in Hell looking at a TV set. The caption read: "Hey, this place isn't so bad! They have TV here. Wait a minute...every channel has Hee Haw on it."
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#22
12-12-2003, 05:14 PM
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It was even shown here in Boston. That's right - Boston - where the owls say "whom". Can you get more Yankee than that?
I wouldn't say that I watched it on a regular basis but it was a nice alternative when "Masterpiece Theater" went into reruns.
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#23
12-12-2003, 05:19 PM
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Quote:
You all realize that "Hee Haw" was actually filmed on a soundstage in New York, and written by Dick Cavett and Gore Vidal, don't you?
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#24
12-12-2003, 07:38 PM
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Watched it religiously growing up in north-central West Virginia in the late 60's-early 70's (and speaking of religious: it was always strangely touching when the audience remained church-silent after the gospel quartet finished singing. It taught me that religious people can enjoy looking at hot babes. After church.
While the chorus of 'Where Oh Where' was standard, the opening verse was always a high point -- it sometimes featured the week's guest music star as the cuckold/cuckoldette between Archie and his unfaithful wife. Their face would start out hidden, and they would turn around to be recognized in time to join in singing the chorus. I also dearly loved the stupid puns told in front of a picket fence, punctuated with one of the pickets swooping up and smacking the joke-teller in the butt. My personal favorite was with Archie Campbell and the hyper-babelicious Gunilla Hutton: Gunilla: I crossed myself with some frozen milk. Audience: What did you get? Gunilla: Gunilla ice cream. Hee hee hee... (smack!) Archie: (leering) I'll take a dish of that! (smack!)
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#25
12-12-2003, 07:47 PM
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I did catch it in the Los Angeles market, so that answers that part of the original question.
I recall noticing the Hager twins on the show, and years later wondering if Sammy Hagar was one of them. I also remember enjoying the Burma-Shave-esque signs they would show on the highway between segments.
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#26
12-12-2003, 08:30 PM
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Hee Haw was a CBS network television program from June 1969 to July 1971, when CBS dropped it as part of their effort to de-ruralize their program schedule (The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres) in search of a higher demographic for their advertisers.
Hee Haw has been produced for syndication since then.
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#28
12-12-2003, 09:36 PM
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I live in South Carolina and we watched Hee-Haw every Saturday night, so I can't really add much to the discussion of Yankees watching Hee-Haw.
However, I would like to say that I was the proud owner of a pair of Hee-Haw overalls when I was seven years old. They were covered in a Hee-Haw donkey/hay bale pattern and I loved them. I would have worn them to school every day if my mother had let me. Of course, that has nothing at all to do with the discussion at hand, but really, when else will I get the chance to talk about my Hee-Haw overalls?
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#29
12-12-2003, 10:42 PM
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CT boy here. To this day if I hear a bell ring I will say "Empty Arms Hotel."
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#30
12-12-2003, 10:47 PM
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I'm a'pickin and I'm a'grinnin!
Roy Clark can flat out play the guitar. And when I was seven, I loved the big ol titties on the ladies so much. They were a revelation. Now I'm more of a hair, face and legs man, but that's besides the point.
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#31
12-13-2003, 08:33 AM
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As far as I know Hee Haw was somewhat popular everywhere in the 1970s, but in the 1980s it really declined. I think we could probably judge how 'redneck' an area was if it retained a Hee Haw audience to the very last season.
Wasn't country just cool during the 1970s? Not that Hee Haw itself was all that fashionable, but a lot of people wore overalls, faded jeans, and flannel - not to mention the wide popularity of country music and southern rock. In the 1980's that really went out of style. I mean now we have "country" music on VH1 with folks like Faith Hill and Shania Twain who wear Versace, and most country singers either avoid corniness or overindulge in the more maudlin aspects. But then, country music was not as much corny as it was campy.
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#32
12-13-2003, 04:02 PM
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syncrolecyne, you're right that there's been a vast change, but country has always had its following. There was a very 'hip' country-folk-rock scene in the early 70's (I'm thinking of the Dylan-descended, Gram Parsons stuff -- remember the Stones' 'Exile on Main Street'?)
But this scene didn't mingle much with the mainstream country music from Nashville. I know, because I existed on the fault line: my favorite musicians from that era were the Beatles and Johnny Cash -- and I was one of the few I knew who liked them both. Just about all my friends were one or the other -- the hippies laughed at the hicks, and the hicks thought all the hippies were on drugs (Elvis's death did a lot to break that wall down -- no, I'm not trying to be funny). In the early 1980's, you had 'Urban Cowboy', and then a little later (the mid-late 80's) Randy Travis and Reba became mainstream. Later still you had Faith Hill and Shania Twain, people who, however talented they may be, owed a lot of their success to looks and 'star quality'. More important, country songs today are happy -- they're singing about prosperity and satisfaction. In this climate, Johnny Cash wouldn't get a second look from country music starmakers -- damn the hypotheticals, look what they did to the real Johnny Cash in 1996. Bottom line: country as it existed on Hee Haw is not the same kind of music as today's country, it's been changed to make it more accessible to a larger market. This does not contradict the fact that there are lots of really talented musicians in Nashville, possibly more so than in the past (I know several accomplished classical players in Nashville who play country for their living). But it's a vastly different kind of music.
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#33
12-15-2003, 07:53 AM
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Well, the OP was asking about Hee-Haw airing in Northern urban markets, but thought I'd just add that my part of Alabama was so country that we got Hee-Haw on two different stations (an ABC and an NBC affiliate) and both aired the show at the same time (Saturday at 6 PM). They were technically in different markets, but could be picked up over the air in both areas IIRC. It aired on of them through the last season.
My favorite was Archie Campbell's stories in the barbershop. It just wasn't the same after he died and they had some comedic preacher that looked like Ray Stevens telling stories. Of course I was Catholic then, and couldn't relate to the stories about funny goings-on in Southern Baptist churches. Nearsighted preachers, flea powder in choir robes, and so forth. I was a fan for years until I got into rock music and puberty hit. The Hee-Haw Honeys were nice but the Solid Gold dancers were more my speed at that age. When TNN brought back reruns briefly in the mid-90s, it was a nice bit of nostalgia for me. I hated they pulled it for monster truck shows and other such crap.
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