It was released in 2005. I don’t remember where I bought it. Maybe Wal-Mart, or some bin at a grocery store. The video quality is pretty poor, which may have been one reason it was for sale cheap.
But another thing: the original opening theme music by Flatt and Scruggs (Jerry Scoggins on vocals, written by Paul Henning) is replaced by a bluegrass banjo and guitar instrumental. I don’t have a problem with that, because I can hear that original theme anywhere I want (and the closing theme is intact on every episode).
But the replacement song is REALLY GOOD!
I’d like to find who played/wrote it, but my googling turned up nil.
The Countdown Singers are more than just singers, they also have instrumentalists. Unfortunately for your search, they’ve released more than 80 albums under more than a dozen different names. Here’s the information. Good luck!
It’s not the same recorded version, but the first 16 seconds are definitely the same music.
I’m surprised I’ve never heard of Don Reno. He sounds amazing. Among other things, he played on the original recording of “Dueling Banjos” (originally called “Feudin’ Banjos”).
The song is labeled “The Ballad of Jed Clampett”, and is played by Don Reno and Bobby Thompson (who appeared regularly on Hee Haw in the All-Star Banjo Quartet along with Roy Clark, Grampa Jones, and David “Stringbean” Akeman).
Wiki lists “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” as being written by Paul Henning, creator and producer of the Beverly Hillbillies. I’m skeptical. I know that Sherwood Schwartz did in fact write the Gilligan’s Island theme song, but that song consists pretty much completely of the melody and the chords (and of course the lyrics), which Schwartz sounded out on the piano. Flatt’s and Scruggs’ playing on “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” is a much bigger part of the sound. I suspect Henning wrote only the words.
I have both the Beverly Hillbillies and the Gilligan’s Island boxed sets. I remember listening to the former for the first time and being disappointed that it didn’t have the original theme music. I reacted too soon, of course, because it was included after the first couple of episodes.
The Gilligan’s Island set has the familiar ballad from the first season and the Calypso-style theme from the unaired pilot. Schwartz wrote the lyrics for both to convince the network executives that all necessary back story could be given in a song. (He may have been hoping to have the Calypso theme recorded by Harry Belafonte, since he was a hot item at the time.)
Paul Henning may have written the melody for the verses (it’s a pretty simple tune, and he had been around long enough to hear a lot of countryfied theme songs) but the instrumental bridge was pure Flatt & Scruggs.
