Mt. View, Arkansas – March 21, 2011 by Bob Phillips

What started as a ‘doodle pad idea’ in Hidalgo, Texas, in 1996, eventually evolved into an incredible resurgence of interest in old-time ‘rural’ corn pone humor. Dr. Robert Earl Reed was trying to figure out a way to regain the popularity of old-time rural humor. What he dreamed up was an act called ‘Ooty, Cooty, and Pooty,’ a comedy mainstay that would later become his “Chicken House Opry.”

“I had a pretty good career in traditional country music,” Dr. Reed said, “I recorded for Arco Records in California, and then K-Ark Records in Nashville, Tennessee. To see me over the rough spots in the road, I became an auctioneer, and discovered early on it’s as easy to get big bids on earth-moving equipment as it is a box of buttons, so that’s the direction I took. I teamed up with Leroy Van Dyke (the Singing Auctioneer), hiring him to help me with the business, and that led to a direct relationship with Hank Thompson, a western swing artist. I had a band that occasionally backed Thompson for our smaller projects. Lucy Jackson was my keyboardist. Hank took such a liking to Lucy’s music, he eventually included her in his own band, and started using her regularly. At the same time, I was taking a personal interest in Lucy, and was also pursuing a way to bring back good down-home humor to country music.”

Rural humor goes back a long ways in the American psyche. Sometimes just mentioning a name brings instant recall. Judy Canova! Homer & Jethro! Minnie Pearl! Rod Bradsfield! Andy Griffith! Yes, even Andy Griffith. Before he played the bashful Sheriff in Mayberry, he began a recording career at a very young age, recording an LP as a young mountain boy describing a football game that he had seen for the first time. The dissertation is hilarious. Dolly Parton’s hour-glass figure and outrageous outfits, along with her angelic voice, played perfectly against Porter Wagoner’s corn pone humor and his use of old-fashioned country sensibility. A guaranteed laugh usually told about the wealthy city-slicker wanting to get out of his congested, smelly, dirty, traffic snarled big town and go to the country. Once there he gets lost, and in trying to get directions from a hillbilly, the story relentlessly ends with the same punch line, as the hillbilly says, “I’m not the one that’s lost, you are.”
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This post was submitted by Bob Phillips.