Daisy's Song - HazzardNet

Synopsis:

Daisy’s dreams of musical stardom are dimmed when the song she wrote is heard on the radio being sung not by Jessi Colter, but by a sound-a-like. Bo and Luke head to Atlanta to get to the bottom of the scam, only to find out that Boss Hogg is tied in and that recording studio is a front for a music piracy operation which Boss is trying to use to build connections to the Syndicate. A motor home full of “working girls,” and two dynamite arrows later the operation is destroyed, but Daisy is still out her fifty dollars. Until the boys tell her that Jessi Colter would be recording her song for real.

You think Daisy’s been took?

Commentary:

Ahh…nothing like seeing General Lee heading into the big city of Atlanta. What a sight! Same with Bo in that red shirt huh? The nice thing about the early episodes that were filmed on location, good use of the locales were done and the stories focused more on character development and plot, rather than car jumps and wrecks. General Lee never left the ground in this episode, but the chase through the junkyard is just as good.

Daisy’s aspirations to be a country music singer or songwriter was an angle that seemed to fade as the series continued on, which was unfortunate. Her shuck and jive to Lester Starr is brilliant, despite having to fight him off every moment afterwards. “Thank you for asking about my virtue,” she yells at the boys after pulling off her jive, “which you didn’t. Being attacked, which it is!” The boys, however, haven’t a clue what she’s talking about.

I’ll do anything to get you to listen to my tape…

This is the second and last episode to make references to the “portable prostitution.” Smokey and the Bandit enthusists will remember “Foxy Lady” and her girls with their RV… in Hazzard it was Mabel The Mobile Madam.

Ruby?? What are you doing here??

Rosco’s unease with Boss’s orders (the law is out to lunch!) with the FBI standing right behind him is palpable. It would be one of the only few times where the inner turmoil of Rosco’s crooked duty to Boss versus his duty to uphold the law is shown.

Highlights:

We learn why the boys climb in through the windows of the General. The doors are welded shut.

Luke’s immortal ‘hood slide’ that would grace the opening credits is from this episode. Expertly done, but Tom Wopat would later say that all he did was “trip.” What a trip!

The boys dynamite arrows are lit with fuses. Starting with “Swamp Molly” the boys would use detonator caps. Trying to blow up the barn was made more difficult in that…it started pouring!!

The Syndicate boys didn’t know what to expect in Hazzard. The air smelt funny and there was no place to hide.…

Trivia:

Daisy’s sound-a-like tape featured some big name country acts of the late ‘70s. Jessi Colter of course, but also Donna Fargo and Loretta Lynn. It’s clear tho’ that when Daisy says “Lorreta Lynn” it was over dubbed. It’s possible the script originally called for Dolly Parton, but the studio was unable to get the permission to play a snippet of a Dolly Parton song. =)

Daisy’s Song True Blue Hearts heard at the end of the episode briefly is actually That’s the Way a Cowboy Rocks n’ Rolls by Jessi Coulter off her 1978 album of the same name.