LOS ANGELES (AP) – Jerry Scoggins, who sang “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” which introduced the comical clan on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” has died. He was 93. The song and the TV show premiered in 1962 and were instant hits. The ballad was written by Paul Henning. Scoggins sang the lyrics while bluegrass stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played guitar and banjo. Scoggins’ country and western trio, the Cass County Boys, was hired by Gene Autry for his Melody Ranch radio program in 1946. The group performed in 17 of Autry’s movies. The Cass County Boys were inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame in 1996.
When I was in college, there was a file that someone had put together. It was the Ballad of Jed Clampett in banner form. We used to mail it to one another on the email in the 3B2. Once you opened a message with that in it, you just had to sit and wait for it to finish, it took a while, especially on the terminals connected by 4800 baud connections.
My parents actually had the Flatt and Scruggs LP with the Beverly Hillbillies music on it. Amazing I turned out as normal as I did.
Did he write the theme song for " The Belarabs" too?
"Now this here’s the story of a man named Abdul
A poor desert beduin, he didn’t have no fuel
And then one day he was shooting at some Jews
And up from the ground came a bubbling ooze
Oil, that is
Persian Perrier
Saudi Soda"
From SNL early '80s, IIRC