Lonzo & Oscar

As long as there's been an idiom known as country music, there's been idiots milking the hay seed image of backwoods folk. Hee Haw is only the most recent and prominent example, but long before that immensely popular show, the duo of Lonzo & Oscar (Lloyd George and Rollin Sullivan) were opening for superstar Eddy Arnold as a local yokel comedy/music act. When the duo scored a hit in 1947 with "I'm My Own Grandpa" (later the signature tune for Grandpa Jones), however, they quickly stopped opening for Arnold and set out to become popular stars of their own, doing exactly that as performers on the Grand Ole Opry. And proving that Lonzos (a derogatory term for someone who lives in a rural area) are interchangeable, Rollin "Oscar" Sullivan hired another partner when George tired of the act, taking his aw-schucks comedy act into the 1970s. © Steve Kurutz /TiVo