Aylesworth helped create ‘Hee Haw’
Published 10:10 pm Sunday, August 1, 2010
John Aylesworth, 81, a television writer and producer who was co-creator of the long-running country variety show “Hee Haw,” died Wednesday at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He had pulmonary fibrosis.
Aylesworth and his writing partner and fellow Canadian, Frank Peppiatt, had never visited the rural South or Midwest before developing “Hee Haw,” a fast-paced hour of cornball jokes and music, in 1969. The program featured country singers Buck Owens and Roy Clark as hosts and a stable of other comedians and musicians.
In 1970, Peppiatt told the Los Angeles Times how he and Aylesworth came up with the idea for “Hee Haw.”
“We were looking at the ratings, and ‘Laugh-In’ was the leader followed by ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ ” he said. “We wondered what kind of show would combine both elements.”
After CBS canceled the show — after just two years — Aylesworth, Peppiatt and a business partner found advertisers and syndicated the program on their own — an unheard-of practice in TV at the time. “Hee Haw” remained in production until 1992 and, with 585 episodes, was one of the longest-running shows in TV history.
The writers had previously worked with performers including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews and Perry Como and knew next to nothing about rural life. But, as Aylesworth once recalled, “Country music was sweeping the country and there had never been a network show devoted to country music. We did the old ‘Jimmy Dean Show,’ and we remembered that Jimmy … always wondered why his show was so little country.”
Peppiatt and Mr. Aylesworth devised a formula that featured down-home music and the hay-bale humor of Minnie Pearl and Junior Samples. As a result, “Hee Haw” was one of the few prime-time shows not geared toward urban audiences and became a point of pride in rural America.
