Hee Haw

i remember watching this show with my grandparents. I remember laughing at the comedy and enjoyed the music i would really like to see it in reruns!

This show was awesome, a lot of things try to be serious comedy or even worse try to be serious and end up being corny. But Hee Haw was a show that not only was it corny, it tired to be corny and it realised in the fact about getting as Corny as you could get. Also, it's seemingly G-rated persona was filled with sexual inuendo. Check out the Hee Haw Honies sweaten it out over the laundry and you'll see what I mean. Not even to mention the Country Music of the day, just where was Conway Twitty, rub in it in, rub it in. This show is a total classic hoot, check it out.

This show proved you should never underestimate cornball. Sure, a lot of hicks watched the show (I come from a long line of ridge-runners myself), but they alone didn't keep "Hee-Haw" on the air for all those years. Many people with otherwise sophisticated tastes have low-brow senses of humor. This is why people are still watching "The Three Stooges" and "Benny Hill" after all these years. "Hee-Haw" was ALL cornball, slapstick, T-and-A and great country music, and people ate it up. Much of the show's appeal also came from its fair amount of satire (remember Charlie's radio show on KORN?) and the cast members' unerring ability to laugh at themselves, though viewers never got the impression that anyone felt demeaned by it all. Which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for TV these days.

This was the most corniest of all the variety shows of its day and it still holds that title. First off,the series premiered on CBS-TV in the fall of 1969,became the onslaught of the network's all out crusade of eliminating its rural programming in 1971(and this show caught the full frontal blow of cancellation),and then all of a sudden the show was saved from certain ruins,and found a new home---in syndication where it remained for an astounding 22 years before called it quits for good in the spring of 1993. The reruns of this series was showed recently on the TNN(The Nashville Network)before the logo changed two years after it was cancelled.

But was makes "Hee Haw" a classic in the history of television? Well,first off, I remember this show being on every Saturday night at 7:00 since during that time you had a choice between either this show or a combination of other shows in that same time slot back in the day; 1.) You had Lawrence Welk for the older crowd and those folks who were on Geritol; 2.) Dionne Warwick or Marilyn McCoo for Solid Gold; 3.)Charles Nelson Reilly or Danny Terrio for Dance Fever; 4.)Ed McMahon on Star Search.

Secondly,this show had some country humor,and I do mean country humor that was so corny you can tell that is was just that--straight up the chaser hillbilly dialogue of Southern culture. Also,it's cast was corny too including hosts Buck Owens and Roy Clark and regulars Archie Campbell,George Lindsey(could you believe the producers cast him as Goober here),Minnie Pearl,Grandpa Jones,and that dingy blonde girl who comes up at the end of the segments(She reminds of Chrissy Snow on the farm)and not to mention the Hee Haw Honeys(which was a spin off of this series which sucked badly after 7 episodes in which one of the stars was a unknown Kathie Lee Gifford?). Third,some of it was funny,and some of it was horribly awful,and you can tell that whoever wrote the scripts were straight up hillbillies who had no clue to what a variety show goes through.

The music I say was very good and it set the standard to what country music supposed to be including some that made regular appearances on the show including Conway Twitty,George Jones,Waylon Jennings,Merle Haggard,Dolly Parton,Eddie Rabbitt,Tanya Tucker,Loretta Lynn,and so much more. It was also not only to include country artists,buy also the first country series to featured acts done by other minorities like The Pointer Sisters,and sometimes others like Charlie Pride,and Neal McCoy(the first Native American to perform on the show),not to mention musical works by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos,Roy Clark,and Grandpa Jones. You have some very well known guest stars that appear on the show as well including one Christmas episode where Gunsmoke's Amanda Blake lends her voice to some Christmas tunes as well as Beverly Hillbillies' own Donna Douglas and Gomer Pyle's Jim Nabors. In all a great variety series that had country music at its very best.

Remember growing up and on Saturday nights in the 80's watching reruns of this on my local "CBS" station at grandpa and grandma's house. "Hee Haw" was feel good fun as the jokes were funny with laughs and really corny and the skits were parodies of country life and rural living at it's good old best! Also the music guest were always top of the line which helped move the show along so well and the staples and main players were the now late greats Roy Clark, Buck Owens, Minnie Pearl, and Grandpa Jones! Always they put on good performances with their country talent! Overall this was syndication classic, in some areas even today from time to time you might catch reruns on digital cable TV.