Guilty Pleasures
August 7, 2005
They say one of the advantages of having children is that you get to learn US history all over again (and basic math, grammar, etc, when you help them with their homework). The other advantage (at least when you have boys) is you have an excuse to see Jessica Simpson in Dukes of Hazzard. Jessisa is dazzling, but the movie is dumb, of course, but I liked that it had a few holdover techniques from the original show, including the freezeframe-with-voiceover bit at critical moments (“Now there are a few things you don’t say to a Duke…”). It got me thinking about the original voiceover announcer, whom I remembered as Hoyt Axton, but it turns out it was Waylon Jennings. My bad.
I always had a soft spot for Hoyt, who appeared on camera in a Woody Guthrie tribute called Hard Travelin’, in which he and Arlo Guthrie do a heartbreaking cover of “Deportee.”
This could explain my Hoyt/Dukes confusion: busy actor that Hoyt was, he was a guest-star on an episode of Dukes, playing “Himself” in episode: “Good Neighbors, Duke” (episode # 3.10) 2 January 1981. For the record, I was in Greece that day, so I must have seen the episode in reruns.
How many people out there know Hoyt wrote a certain #1 song?
Posted by Bill Trippe at August 7, 2005 12:03 PM
