It’s been a long time since Hee Haw has been on television. We have seen it come back in syndication over the past few years, but it’s been ages since any new episodes were made. Hee Haw started in 1969 on the CBS Network. If you want to catch a glimpse of one of the old Hee Haw shows today, you could tune-in to RFD-TV and they’re currently airing old Hee Haw shows on Sundays.

Hee Haw was led by their two front men who were Buck Owens and Roy Clark. These two headed the show that would feature other popular personalities that all of America would grow to love. Most people living in rural areas got the show, but surprisingly it was popular in places like New York City and Los Angeles in their run from 1969 to 1971.

One of my favorite characters on Hee Haw was Junior Samples. He was from Cumming, Georgia and one of the bright spots on the show. Junior would often have problems getting his lines right and the producers of Hee Haw didn’t hide this footage. They made sure to show all of Junior’s mistakes and I doubt all the cast together could add up to all the mistakes Junior made on each episode of Hee Haw. Junior’s used cars was always a funny segment and there was even a band that named their self after the famous phone number “BR-549″ that never did change. Not sure how the show came up with that as the phone number to the used car lot owned by Junior Samples. If anyone knows this; then please reply and let me know. Junior was as country in real life as he was on the show and he wore overalls before ever going to film any episodes of Hee Haw.

Stringbean was another character I like from Hee Haw. His real name was David Akeman and he never had too many big roles on the show as a front man. You could often see Stringbean in the background for many of the Hee Haw skits. He was the scarecrow you would see in the corn field; when jokes or salutes were being given from the cornfield. Hee Haw left the scarecrow up as a tribute to Stringbean for his untimely death in 1973.

You can’t mention Hee Haw without talking about Grampa Jones. He was the wise one on the show and gave great view points on a variety of things. He could make you a little hungry sometimes when Hee Haw would do their skit “HEY GRAMPA! WHAT’S FOR DINNER?’. He had a unique and very southern way of naming food items that were on the dinner menu. Looking back on it now, I think Grampa Jones was a big part of what kept the show together and made Hee Haw such a big success in the early 1970′s.

I don’t think no one could forget Cathy Baker who played the perky blonde girl on Hee Haw. She was the clean one that dressed in descent attire for the show (usually overalls). The other Hee Haw girls would wear much more revealing clothes, but for Cathy it was always simple and sweet. She would normally have the Hee Haw Dog next to her in many of the skits or songs that got performed on Hee Haw. According to the Hew Haw website the name of the dog was “Buddy the Wonder Dog”, but I remember the early Hee Haw shows calling the bloodhound “Beauregard”. One thing that Cathy did get to do each episode was to close the show. Hee Haw had their own song each time that would close out the show and then you could see Cathy saying “That’s All!” each time Hee Haw went off. I will use Mrs. Hee Haw’s line to close this blog post on remembering the TV Show Hee Haw. That’s all!