'Remembering Hee Haw': Kornfield Friends brings stage version to Lakeland
For 50 years, television audiences sang along and laughed along with Roy Clark, Grandpa Jones, Minnie Pearl and other members of the ''Hee Haw'' family. First aired on CBS in 1969, its combination of sketches of rural life, lively banter and down-home music and dancing made it successful in all major markets.
A celebration of the show and its stars comes to the RP Funding Center in the Youkey Theatre on Jan. 9: “Remembering Hee Haw.”
Four original cast members — comedian, singer and author Lulu Roman; the perky, squeaky-voiced blonde Misty Rowe; country music hitmaker T. Graham Brown; and Jana Jae, country and bluegrass fiddler known for her blue fiddle — are part of the production.
Speaking from her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jae said the RP Funding Center show is the first trip to Lakeland for “Remembering Hee Haw.” The show is coordinated by Kornfield Friends LLC, a company comprised of former “Hee Haw” stars and producers; Jae is its executive producer.
Jae said Kornfield Friends did a “Hee Haw” 50th year reunion show in 2018 for the RFD-TV pay channel and that helped lead to the traveling show. She said it has been a fun way to relive the show’s heyday.
Jae, 78, said “Remembering Hee-Haw” contains popular sketches and songs from the show’s TV run and strives to stick to the routines in their original formats. Some of the more renown Hee-Haw bits — complete with corny jokes — that will be performed include the guitar-banjo “Pickin’ and Grinnin’ ”; Buck Owens and Roy Clark’s rendition of “Where Are You Tonight?”; the pop-up comedy in the “Cornfield” and “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me” made famous by Jones, Gordie Tapp, Clark and Archie Campbell.
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Because the show is live, Jae said, the pacing of the stage show is more fluid than television where 13 “Cornfield’ scenes were shot together, then songs and scenes done separately and edited together for a single show.
“('Hee Haw') was filmed in bits and pieces, so there’s some skits we can’t do. But we do try to bring that feel of comedy, corny jokes and a lot of activity to the stage,” said Jae. “It’s definitely a family show with the feel of ‘Hee Haw,’ even though we’re there on stage and we don’t have a camera chopping us up into different segments.
“It was such a family event when there weren’t hundreds of channels to choose from. We were very recognizable and like extended family. That’s the feeling we get from people at the shows,” she said. “We want the audience to sing, clap, laugh and even cry if they want to.”
IF YOU GO:
WHAT: ''Remembering Hee Haw''
WHEN: 7 p.m., Jan. 9, 2022
WHERE: RP Funding Center, 701 W. Lime St., Lakeland
COST: $93, $51, $40. Parking $10.
INFO: 863-834-8100; www.rpfundingcenter.com
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Kornfield Friends brings stage version of 'Remembering Hee Haw' to Lakeland