If Gomer Pyle was Curly, then Goober was Shemp
As a not-too-bright hillbilly, Gomer Pyle was the gold standard. As a "stooge", Curly was king!
If you are female, before you proceed, ask one of your male friends who Shemp is.
Before we arrived for one of our taping sessions at the CBC Studio on Mutual Street in Toronto, the producer of The Tommy Hunter Show, Les Pouliot, gave us a list of the guests we’d be welcoming to our comedy segment, The Ol’ Back Porch. This taping would welcome three guests. The first two would be making their second appearance, Scottish/Canadian comedian Billy Meek and Winnipeg’s comedic genius, Al Simmons. But the name on the list that surprised me was George “Goober” Lindsey.
I turned to my bandmates in Whiskey Jack and asked “Goober? Really?” I was a Gomer guy and never thought of Goober as a major player when he began to appear as Gomer’s cousin on Andy Griffith Show. Goober could no more replace Gomer than Shemp could replace Curly on The Three Stooges…..they were change-the-channel kind of characters….not worth my time.
As it turns out, George was a nice enough fellow - friendly and outgoing. I’m perplexed why I still remember his appearance (not something I normally notice) but he was dressed like a dandy, as only a dandy from Nashville would dress. Lots of colour.
His performance was uncomfortable. Whiskey Jack knew how this was supposed to play out. We’d seen it many times before. Each week, Greg, our bass player, would knock on the porch door, the guest would walk out, we’d yell “it’s George Lindsey”, and applaud like hell. His job was simple…all he had to do was to be funny for 2 or 3 minutes. That’s it. For that, he was paid a pretty penny, probably in US currency + expenses. In other words, he was flown to Toronto at great expense. Spending money was something this show had no trouble doing during our stay.
The problem in this episode was significant and it turned out to be the only segment we taped that was never aired (don’t worry, we all got paid). George wasn’t funny. He spent the 2 minutes talking about George Lindsey.
He had just released his first (and only) album, “George “Goober” Lindsey Goes to Town” and he was hellbent to promote it…and promote it he did.
Our job was to laugh uproariously at the jokes, funny or not, but in George’s case, there was nothing to laugh at.