Deep, Dark Depression, Excessive Misery

 Chorus:

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

-“Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me!”

Recorded by Buck Owens and Roy Clark

Lyrics by Bernie Brillstein, Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth

From Wikipedia-

"Hee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with the fictional rural "Kornfield Kounty" as the backdrop. It aired from 1969 to 1993, and on TNN from 1996 to 1997.

The show was inspired by Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, but centered on country music, rural rather than pop culture–inspired humor, and with far less topical material."

Hee-Haw #1 (July 1970, Charlton)

Please allow me to explain my love for HEE-HAW...

I grew up in Appalachia, with one foot in southern Ohio and the other in northern Kentucky...to be specific, the Adams County region of Ohio and near and around Maysville, KY.  There's a lot of cultural cross pollination going on there.  A friend once told me that, "the Ohio River Valley is about as Southern as you can get without actually being in the South".  So, needless to say that there's an awful lot of Southern tropes and stereotypes going on, such as hillbillies, red necks...y'know, "local yokels".  The last stereotype we feel comfortable as Americans making fun of.  If you don't believe it, look at the lasting popularity of Larry the Cable Guy, but I digress...

Christ....this is actually a thing.

There's an awful lot of love for that ol' mixture of 1940s Western Swing and Cowboy songs, Country and Western music in the River Valley, and I'll admit that I'm part of that problem.  But, my preferences in the genre are kinda specific...none of this stuff being pushed as "Country Music" today qualifies.  At this point, it's all just pop music sang with a nasal flair.  I'm of the opinion that the genre started moving in this direction in the early 1990s with the immerguamce of the "Young Country" movement and artists such as Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus beginning to chart on pop charts and gaining mainstream audience popularity.  I'm more of a "Classic Country" fan....the sad weepy barroom stuff from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.  And HEE-HAW (the television show) was a staple of my 1970s/1980s childhood.  As a guitar enthusiast, I've alway been a fan of longtime co-host Buck Owens (and the "Bakersfield Sound" subgenre that he was the primary star of), so me being a fan of HEE-HAW is kind of a no-brainer.

Hee-Haw Magazine #1 (May 1970, Charlton)

Charlton Comics (God Bless'Em) was crazy enough to license the show in 1970 and produced seven issues of a standard color comic book and 13 issues of a magazine which was less like a black and white comics magazine and more of a Country Music centric version of one of Charlton's other publications, HIT PARADER with the occasional one panel gags and a little fumetti work.  Both books are kinda hard to find in decent condition, and trying to collect a complete set of the magazine has been the bane of my existence for nearly three decades now.  At last count, I own 8 of the 13 issues.  It amuses me to no end that I live in a world where there's not one, but two Hee-Haw related comics publications.

Hee-Haw Magazine #12 (September 1974)

I've always jokingly referred to the cover of issue #6 as "the Savage Sword of Junior Samples".  Don't know why...just me amusing myself with nerdy fanboy attempts at humor....

Hee-Haw Magazine #6 (March 1971, Charlton)