TLDR: Junior Samples was born Alvin Monroe Samples Jr. in Cumming, Georgia in 1926, dropped out of school in sixth grade, and spent his first forty years as a carpenter, moonshiner, and stock car driver. He became a television star entirely by accident, after a fish story he told on local radio became a novelty record that caught the attention of Hee Haw’s producers. He died of a heart attack in 1983 at age 57, fourteen years into his run on the show.
Nobody who watched Hee Haw ever forgot Junior Samples.
He was the big man on the couch in the Culhanes sketches, the one who stumbled over his lines and grinned like he knew it, the used car salesman who invited the whole country to call him at BR-549.
What most of those viewers did not know was that the bumbling was largely real, the folksy authenticity was entirely genuine, and the man delivering those cornfield punchlines had never expected to be on television at all.
He was probably the only cast member who actually wore overalls before he joined the show.
A Georgia Boy Who Never Planned on Fame
Alvin Monroe Samples Jr. was born on April 10, 1926, in Cumming, Georgia, a small town in the North Georgia foothills.
He left school after the sixth grade and spent his working years doing whatever was available: carpentry, sawmill work, stock car racing, and, by various accounts, some moonshining on the side.
He was not building toward anything in particular. He was just living.
In 1966, at the age of forty, he went on local radio and told a story about catching the largest fish anyone in his county had ever seen. The story was a tall tale, embellished with the kind of deadpan confidence that makes a lie sound better than the truth.
A recording of the interview became a novelty record called “The World’s Biggest Whopper.” It sold well enough to get noticed.
Country music comedian Archie Campbell heard the record, tracked Samples down, and introduced him to the producers of a new variety show being built around Roy Clark and Buck Owens. Hee Haw debuted on CBS in 1969. Junior Samples was in the original cast.
The Accident That Was His Greatest Asset
Junior Samples could not reliably read cue cards. He frequently forgot his lines mid-joke.
When he delivered a punchline, it often arrived a beat late, or slightly wrong, or trailing off in a direction nobody had planned.
The audience loved him for all of it. His fumbling was not a performance of incompetence, it was actual incompetence, and it was hilarious in a way that polished delivery could never have been.
He contributed something to the show’s surrealist rhythm that its writers could not have scripted: the genuine article, placed in front of a camera and left to his own devices.
Roy Clark once told the story of arriving back on set after a production break to find Samples had removed his upper four front teeth. Clark asked what happened.
Samples explained that somebody had told him a comedian was funnier without teeth, so he went to the dentist and had them pulled. He was not joking.
BR-549 and the Phone Number That Outlived the Show
His most famous recurring bit was a used car salesman character operating out of a fictional lot called Samples Sales. At the end of each sketch, he held up a hand-painted sign and invited viewers to call him at BR-549, an old five-digit phone number format that had been out of use since the 1950s.
The BR stood for Brenda Reece, a friend of several cast members who suggested her initials when the writers had the number 549 but needed a prefix.
The combination stuck.
BR-549 became one of the most recognized numbers in television history without ever connecting to an actual phone line.
When Hee Haw episodes were later sold through television advertising in the 1990s, the toll-free number to order them was 1-800-BR54949. In 1993, a country music band named themselves BR5-49 as a direct tribute to the bit.
The number appears on signs at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis as a cautionary example of a fake phone number.
Junior Samples had been dead for a decade by then, but the joke was still working.
The Man Behind the Character
Samples was married to Grace Carrie Bolton, and the couple had five children together. Several of his children appeared on Hee Haw during the early seasons, playing schoolhouse students and appearing in family sketches.
He was a devout Christian throughout his life and a close friend of Reverend Douglas Collins, who officiated his funeral. His weight, which periodically approached 400 pounds, created ongoing health challenges across his fourteen years on the show.
He had been treated for cardiac issues and recently released from hospital when he died.
In 1974 he announced he was “seriously considering” running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia on the Republican ticket. The media briefly covered it as a genuine political story before Samples confirmed it was a publicity stunt. He was nominated for Comedian of the Year at the Country Music Awards in both 1969 and 1970.
His Death at 57
Junior Samples died of a heart attack on November 13, 1983, at the age of 57, in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was in his fourteenth year as a regular cast member of Hee Haw.
He was buried in Cumming, Georgia, the town where he had been born and where he had spent the first four decades of his life with no expectation of ever being famous.
Hee Haw paid tribute with a special episode featuring clips of his best moments. His colleagues remembered him as one of the show’s most irreplaceable presences, not because of what he could do, but because of what he simply was.
For more on the cast and the show’s remarkable run, see our full guide to the Hee Haw cast where they are now.
Junior Samples and Hee Haw: Frequently Asked Questions
What happened to Junior Samples from Hee Haw?
Junior Samples died of a heart attack on November 13, 1983, at age 57, in Knoxville, Tennessee. He had been treated for cardiac issues related to his weight, which periodically neared 400 pounds, and had recently been released from hospital before his death. He was in his fourteenth year as a cast member of Hee Haw.
What was the phone number BR-549 on Hee Haw?
BR-549 was the fictional phone number Junior Samples used in his recurring used car salesman sketch on Hee Haw. The BR stood for Brenda Reece, a friend of cast members who suggested her initials. The number became so culturally embedded that a country music band named themselves BR5-49 in 1993 as a tribute, and it was used as the order line when Hee Haw episodes were sold on television in the 1990s.
How did Junior Samples get on Hee Haw?
Junior Samples got on Hee Haw after a fish story he told on local radio in 1966 became a novelty record called The World’s Biggest Whopper. Comedian Archie Campbell heard the record, tracked him down, and introduced him to the show’s producers. Samples was a sixth-grade dropout and carpenter with no acting experience when he joined the original cast in 1969.
