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The surprise hit of the 1962-63 television season was producer Paul Henning’s show “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Though universally panned by critics, it ranked as the number one program with TV watchers during its first two seasons attracting as many as 60 million viewers each week. Before the show premiered Henning’s dilemma was how to define the premise each week for brand new viewers. His wife Ruth came to the rescue with her suggestion that he create a theme song to briefly recount how Jed Clampett discovered oil on his land, became a millionaire and moved to Beverly Hills, California. Henning wrote “The Ballad Of Jed Clampett” and recruited Bluegrass veterans Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to provide the background music. For the actual TV show, the vocal was sung by deep-voiced Jerry Scoggins, a guitarist with the Cass County Boys who had often backed up Gene Autry. On Monday September 24, 1962 two days before the CBS TV show premiered Flatt & Scruggs recorded their own version featuring Lester’s vocal at Columbia studios in Nashville. The premier episode attracted 50 per cent of the viewing audience! But despite show’s instant success Earl Scrugg’s wife Louise (who was the duo’s business manager) had difficulty convincing Columbia producer Don Law to release the recording as a single. She finally prevailed and the record entered the Billboard chart on December 8, 1962. It topped the survey this week in 1963 giving Flatt & Scruggs their only number one country hit. It also made history as the first bluegrass song to top the Billboard Country Chart.
Henning wrote a third verse to the song that was deleted due to timing:
Ol’ Jed bought a mansion, lawdy it was swank,
Next door neighbor was pres’dent of the bank,
Lotsa folks objected, but the banker found no fault,
‘Cause ol’ Jed’s millions was a-layin’ in the vault.
Cash that is, capital gains, depletion money.