Junior became a star on the syndicated country television variety show “Hee Haw” because of a taped interview made in 1967 with Jim Morrison, then chief of information for the Georgia conservation department.

Junior claimed he had caught a world record largemouth bass from Georgia’s Lake Lanier, a sprawling impoundment just across the road from Cumming.  The fish allegedly weighed 22 pounds, nine ounces.  Every schoolboy knows the world record is 22 pounds, four ounces, caught in 1932 by George Perry from Montgomery Lake, Georgia.

It is the outdoor equivalent of Joe DiMaggio’s streak of hitting in 56 straight games.  Perry’s record has endured for more than 70 years and anyone who breaks it will have instant fame.  The endorsements alone will bring a fortune.  Junior Samples won fame and fortune even though his record claim was a flat-out lie.

Morrison interviewed Junior, a sprawling 300-pound heap of a man, on a front porch right out of Dogpatch.  “It was Squalor Holler,” Morrison said.  “The outhouse was in a corner of a stall in the barn.  There were no screens on the windows and there was trash and garbage laying out in the weeds.”

Morrison had no trouble finding Junior.  Cumming wasn’t much bigger than Junior anyway, and he was, if not a leading, at least a prominent citizen.  “He was racin’ cars and runnin’ a liquor store,” Morrison says.  Before that, Junior had run moonshine–it’s how he learned to drive a race car, another of his good ol’ boy careers.

Junior also fancied himself a carpenter.  “Drivin’ nails,” he drawled.  But he allowed–and here he paused as if he were trying to spit out a mouthful of cockleburs–that work had interfered with his fishing before he caught the record bass.  “But it ain’t gonna no more!” he vowed fervently.  “Ah’m gonna do a bonch uh fishin’!”

Junior’s interview was a masterpiece of misdirection.  “He told it so convincingly I believed him,” Morrison said.  Junior claimed he ate the world record bass.  “Ah’s lookin’ fer sumpin tuh eat!” he declared.  That would have invalidated his claim even if it had been true.  But he told Morrison the fish had been weighed in several places around the lake.

Quoted:
Junior liked to smoke weed.