I need to do a Dreamtime episode on the Western Swing phenomena of the `40s and `50s, which has just a ton of great subject matter and characters to write about, including Carolina Cotton - "the Yodelin' Blonde Bombshell" - who you can see on bass in this clip, and Spade Cooley, the King of Western Swing, whose life played out like a James Ellroy noir novel.
Here we have the Deuce Spriggins Orchestra, featuring Hank Penny, doing Missouri. Spriggins - real name George Braunsdorf - and Cotton (Helen Hagstrom) were secretly married in 1945, and left Spade Cooley's band that same year, taking many of Cooley's musicians with them to form their own band. Spriggins and Cotton would be divorced the following year, with few people knowing that they had been married.
Hank Penny, whose 1950s hit Bloodshot Eyes was featured on Dreamtime 39, was born Herbert Clayton Penny on September 18, 1918, in Birmingham, AL. By the age of 15, he was performing professionally on local radio, and had formed his own band, The Radio Cowboys, before he turned 18.
By the mid-'40s, Penny was in Los Angeles, and had been recruited to front one of the pseudo-Spade Cooley bands that were operating throughout the country. Cooley's popularity was at such a height during the 1940s that the real Spade Cooley Orchestra couldn't fill all its bookings, so Cooley's manager simply formed several more Western Swing bands and sent them on the road under the Spade Cooley brand.
After later stints as band leader, deejay, and club owner, Penny joined Cooley's wildly popular television program in 1948 as a comic backwoods type known as "That Plain Ol' Country Boy." A year later, Penny cut Hillbilly Bebop, an attempt to reclaim the audience Western Swing was losing to the new bop music, and the more successful hit of 1950, Bloodshot Eyes.
Penny later would become a co-owner of the legendary Palomino Club, hosted his own television series, The Hank Penny Show, which was canceled after only a few weeks, and have a much more successful seven-year run at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. He'd later moved to Nashville, and audition for the hosting slot of Hee Haw, a job he'd lose to Roy Clark. He passed away in 1992.*
*Note: Hank's widow, Shari, was kind enough to contact me with the correct dates of Hank's birth and death and I've edited the post to reflect those dates Shari notes that the Hank Penny official web site will be online within the month, and we'll link to it when it goes live. Thank you, Shari!
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This is the Dreamtime podcast - occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour weekly show.
Episode 7 – The donkey that wouldn't die
Who knew Dylan loves corny old jokes? Who knew that he liked HEE HAW? Well, maybe the second is easier to understand than the first.
HEE HAW was launched in 1969 by two Canadian TV producers as a country music version of NBC’s popular Laugh-In. If you had seen Laugh-In, you immediately recognized the model: quick cuts; pretty girls wearing the minimum possible for network TV, catch phrases, stupid jokes. HEE HAW just substituted corn-pone for Laugh-In's pop references. But HEE HAW had one thing that Laugh In didn't… country music, often very good country music,
Buck Owens, with twenty Number 1 hits already under his belt, taped the pilot of HEE HAW in 1968. CBS picked it up as a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, canceled because of Tommy Smothers ongoing war with network censors over the shows pro-drug and anti-war humor. CBS picked up a 13 -show option for Hee Haw, and at Buck’s recommendation the producers hired singer Roy Clark as co-host. The show premiered Sunday, June 15, 1969.
Country music was enormously popular on the radio in the 60s, but had never cracked national television. Like the Smothers Brothers show, whose musical guests had included everyone from the Doors to the Beatles, HEE HAW's secret weapon, and what made it more than a hillbilly Laugh-In, was its music.
Its regulars included Buck Owens, Roy Clark, and Grandpa Jones of course, so it had Grand Ole Opry street cred right from the git-go, and it brought in a couple of big guest stars every week. Guests like Alabama, Roy Acuff, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, Crystal Gayle, Merle Haggard, Janis Ian, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Lyle Lovett, Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrell, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Ray Price, Charley Pride, Charlie Rich, Linda Ronstadt, Kenny Rogers, Roy Rogers, George Strait, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, B.J. Thomas, Mel Tillis, Randy Travis, Travis Tritt, Ernest Tubb, Conway Twitty, Boxcar Willie, Tammy Wynette, Hank Williams Jr., and Faron Young, just to name a few.
HEE HAW was so successful during its initial summer run that CBS slotted it into the fall schedule, but it would only last on the network for two years, being killed off in the Great CBS Hillbilly Purge of 19 and 71, which also claimed The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres. CBS network suits had decided all three shows had the wrong viewer demographics – that is rural, older and with less disposable income than hipper, younger audiences.
However HEE HAW would really hit its stride in syndication, where niche programming thrives. From 1971 thorough 1997, HEE HAW was playing on some station in America every week.
A total of 585 one-hour HEE HAWs were taped in Nashville, Tennessee. The cast would tape an entire season in June and October each year, freeing them for other pursuits the other 10 months. But Buck Owens had little left to pursue after HEE HAW's success.
"Anybody that’s been on television… when you become a household name, when they can see you once a week, it reduces and diminishes your value." Owens noted in an interview on his web site. "In 1969 I was still havin’'#1 records. As I went along it degenerated into more comedy and a lot less singin’, or doin' those silly little cast songs.
"I enjoyed the Hee Haw people, but from 1980 on I didn’t enjoy it and thought about leavin’, and thought, hell, it’s an easy job and pays wonderful. I kinda just prostituted myself for their money. My music, which I loved, had suffered badly and I knew what it was from: too much ‘Phifft! You Were Gone.' I thought: ‘One more year, I’ll do one more year...'"
Owens finally left HEE HAW in 1986, stating in several other interviews before his death in 2006 that the show had effectively ruined his musical career.
In 1991, HEE HAW tried a new format with a more urban feel and pop-oriented country sound, which succeeded only in alienating its core audience. In its final 1992 season, and renamed Hee Haw Silver, the show featured Roy Clark, who remained with HEE HAW till the bitter end, hosting a mixture of classic clips and new footage.
After the show's syndication run ended, reruns aired on The Nashville Network until 1997. Its 22 years in TV syndication was the record for a U.S. program, until "Wheel of Fortune" surpassed it in 2005.
And the donkey still refuses to die. On July 17, Country Music Television, a cable channel announced that it will begin rerunning the series, starting July 29. In fact, I taped the HEE HAW segments from a CMT HEE HAW marathon last weekend. The show was just as corny as I remember… and the music just as good.
This has been Fred Bals with the Dreamtime podcast - occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour.
The only association Dreamtime has is free association. Keep pickin' and a-grinnin' and keep dreaming.
