Junior Samples
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Junior Samples, born Alvin Samples, Jr. (April 10, 1926 – November 13, 1983) was an American comedian best known for his 14-year run as a cast member of the TV show Hee Haw.
Samples (notorious for pre-fishing) was a stock car racing driver who went on the radio at the age of 40, and told a story about catching the largest fish ever seen in his hometown. The story was a humorous tall tale, and the recording of this radio story became a best-selling novelty record.
He was asked to become part of the 1969 cast of Hee Haw, and created a bumbling personality -- he often slurred his way through delivery, messing up jokes and forgetting lines -- more in line with Andy Kaufman than traditional comedy. One of his most famous blunders was from "The Cornfield" sketch...
- Junior: "What did the judge lock up old Stan Hawkins fer?"
- Roy Clark: "Bigotry. He had three wives!"
- Junior: "That's not bigotry, that's trig...trem...tri..." The word he continuously slipped on was "trigonometry".
In 1974, Samples announced that he was "seriously considering" running for lieutenant governor of Georgia on a Republican ticket with then-mayor Ronnie Thompson, who was seeking the party's gubernatorial nomination. The media at first presented Samples' announcement as a political story. However, Samples was pulling a practical joke for publicity purposes. Thompson remained in the race and was defeated in the general election by the Democrat George D. Busbee.[1]
In this way, Samples did much to contribute to the post-Laugh In surrealist comedy of the show, with its strange combination of absurdist kitsch and down-home non sequiturs. His most famous bit was as a used car salesman, inviting callers to call an older 5-digit phone number, BR-549. When Hee Haw episodes were later sold to the public through a TV ad, the initial 800 number was 1-800-BR54949, a takeoff of Samples' comedy bit. In 1993 BR5-49 was also taken as a name by an American country music band. The number also appears as a cell phone number on signs at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana cautioning against the use of cell phones.
Samples, whose weight sometimes neared four hundred pounds, was on Hee Haw for fourteen years, until he died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-seven in 1983. He was nominated for two Comedian of the Year Awards from the Country Music Awards in 1969 and 1970, and released a number of other comedy albums.
[edit] Reference
- '^ Buddy Kelly Moore, Machine Gun Ronnie' Thompson: A Political Biography, Georgia College and State University at Milledgeville, 1976, pp. 89-90
