Monday, September 29, 2008

Season 1, Episode 3



Aired 6/29/69

Tammy Wynette performs "Stand By Your Man" and "Take Me To Your World" on the "nighttime porch" seemingly reserved for the women folk. I've always thought Tammy was too static a performer to be visually interesting, but, as always, her singing's spot on, with all the "tears" in the right places.

George Jones. Now here comes fun. Jones does two of his best songs (if one can pick just two bests from the Legend), "White Lightning" and "Walk Through This World." I have to disclose a certain fascination with George's ever-changing, always-interesting hair. Here, it seems to be in a moderate transition phase between '50s/'60s flattop and '70s long. Typically terrific performances, but there's a crazy LOUD echo on his voice during "Walk" that practically ruins it.

Buck Owens and the Buckaroos do "It Takes People Like You" and "Love's Gonna Live Here." AGAIN with that deafening echo on "Love's Gonna Live Here." Somebody shoot the producer! Buck also teams up with Don Rich, Susan Raye, and the Hagers on "But You Know I Love You." 

Grandpa Jones. One of the best moments in a stupendous episode comes when Grandpa's barreling through "Night Train to Memphis" and breaks a string mid-way, sending his banjo out of tune. This probably could've been edited out for TV, but instead the cast makes jokes while Grandpa mumbles incoherently, feverishly working to replace the string. Faster than you can say "Clifty Farms smoked country ham," he's back in tune and tears back into the song from the beginning without hesitation. Now that's a pro!

2 comments:

BoundTogetherForGood said...

Did you only write up your thoughts on a handful of episodes? I grew up watching Hee Haw and want to watch all of the episodes again, in order.

REX said...

I'm sorry, this blog was sort of abandoned. I've been watching all the episodes on RFD-TV, but they're up to around 1973 and aren't re-running the older episodes. The complete series is apparently available here on dvd
http://completesets.net/heehaw.html#
Maybe it's for rent on Netflix or hulu?