<Archive Obituary> Junior Samples (November 13th 1983)
Bill Schenley
Photo:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v707/WarheadsLegoMan/JuniorSamples.jpg
FROM: The Associated Press (November 14th 1983) ~
Alvin "Junior" Samples, the slow-talking country comedian whose bib
overalls and 300-pound frame were a familiar sight for 14 years on the
popular television show "Hee Haw," has died at 56 after a long bout
with heart disease.
Samples, who was first hospitalized for hardening of the arteries in
1981, died Sunday at Forsyth County Hospital after suffering cardiac
arrest at his home, nursing supervisor Gayle Jones said. He had been
relased from an Atlanta hospital, where he had been treated for a
heart-related ailment, on Tuesday.
Samples' rise to stardom began when he severed the head of a red
grouper, a salt-water fish, and claimed it was the remains of a
world-record largemouth bass he had caught in nearby Lake Lanier. Jim
Morrison, then with the Georgia Game and Fish Commission, recorded
Samples' account of catching the fish, and the story made the radio
before a biologist shot it down.
But it was a good yarn, Morrison said, and eventually he and Samples
started appearing at country-and-western nightclubs.
A recording company made the story into a record, "The World's Biggest
Whopper," in 1967. Next came an album, "The World of Junior Samples."
Samples also recorded an album of ad lib humor with comedian Archie
Campbell, "Bull Session at Bull's Gap."
That led to an audition with "Hee Haw."
Samples once said his appearances on the TV show "just 'bout ruint me"
because his neighbors in Cumming, 30 miles north of Atlanta, took it
for granted he was rich and "they want me to pay my bills."
"He was a simple, naive, but very loving type person," Sam Lovullo,
producer of "Hee Haw," said Sunday night from his Los Angeles home.
"His image was that he couldn't read or write. Certainly, Junior was
smart enough to know how to read a check and smart enough to know how
to sign one."
But the truth was Junior could barely read or write, Lovullo said. "He
used to say, 'I'd rather be wise and act dumb than be dumb and act
wise."'
David L. Ward, a spokesman for "Hee Haw" in Nashville, said Samples
finished his last taping for the show in October. The segment, called
"Junior Used Cars," will air sometime between January and March 1984.
Before becoming famous, Samples lived with his wife and six children
in a three-room, $25-a-month shack he paid for by working various
jobs.
"I made liquor in every branch in Forsyth County and in a few chicken
houses, too," he once boasted to a reporter.
With his new wealth he built a brick home, but otherwise, according to
his sister, he spent much of his time as he always had: bass fishing
on Lake Lanier.
"A lot of people thought Junior was dumb, but that's not true. He was
just uneducated. But he spoke the language of the common man," said
Morrison, now executive director of the Georgia Wildlife Federation.
Samples had "a natural comic way of speaking," Morrison said in a
telephone interview Sunday night.
Services were set for 2 p.m. Tuesday in Cumming.
Survivors include his wife, Grace, six children, his mother, five
sisters and three brothers.
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Photo: http://www.chartrecords.net/JuniorSamples.jpg
Junior Samples in art:
http://granfalloon2001.tripod.com/granny2001/comedy21postwa/samplesjuniorbig.jpg