Birmingham vintage Christmas TV: Country Boy Eddie to Dean and Company - AL.com

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From the songs of Country Boy Eddie to the delightfully surreal tradition of the Dean and Company holiday specials, Christmas is a magical time on the Birmingham airwaves.

For 38 years, Gordon Edward Burns greeted early risers in Birmingham with the words, “Good morning, friends and neighbors.” From 1957 to 1993, Burns -- better known as Country Boy Eddie -- hosted everyone from Dolly Parton to Marilyn Monroe.

In the 1960s, he introduced the world to a single mother who lived in the Elyton public housing community and worked a hair dresser in Midfield. A few years later, Tammy Wynette was a country music sensation.

WBRC FOX6 on Monday, December 14 at 6:30 p.m. will air a special in honor of his 90th birthday. His Christmas specials for years were a Magic City holiday tradition.

And since 1979, it just wouldn’t be Christmas in the Magic City without Dean and Company and their musical, puppet-filled and utterly bizarre holiday special.

The public access special has featured kids performing dance numbers, a fake news cast about elves going on strike and Deanie Dean in more than a dozen costumes. Low budget special effects? You better believe it.

Dean and Company started in the late 1970s by Dana Dean Lesley Dougherty and her mother Daisy Dean Lesley as a spin-off of a Crestway Baptist Church video ministry. The two, joined by Dana’s husband, Pat Dougherty, took a nine-week video-programming training course to learn to create the show. It’s been all in the family since.

“Most of the company in Dean and Company productions are Birmingham-area folks, such as Daisy’s neighbors Renee and Rick Harris, who appear, with their dogs Roxie and Sissy, in the Christmas special, singing “Happy Anniversary” to the Deans,” late, great Birmingham journalist Kathy Kemp wrote for the special’s 20th anniversary in 1999.

“Other stars of the holiday program are former Birmingham Mayor George Seibels, who gets in a plug for the Humane Society; a group of Our Lady of Lourdes kindergartners, performing Three Dog Night’s version of “Joy to the World;” and assorted other schoolchildren, church friends and Dean acquaintances dancing, singing and performing skits.”It’s very hard for community access volunteer crews to stay together for even a year, let alone 20 years,” says Tim Stout, Time Warner Cable’s community programming manager. “They definitely have a cult following. I’ll be on the street, wearing a Time Warner shirt, and people come up to me and say, ‘Oh you’re the company that has the Deans!’ I’d say it’s the most-watched show on public access, after the Birmingham City Council meeting.”

Sadly, I could not find any Christmas videos of beloved children’s TV host Cousin Cliff Holman. However, this 1962 Thanksgiving episode featured an ad for a “deluxe play mobile” that could be held until Christmas for $1 at Food Market.

When Holman died in 2008 of Alzheimer’s at age 79, he left behind a cherished television legacy. “To a generation of baby boomers who grew up in Birmingham and around Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s, “Cousin Cliff” Holman was, and still is, a legend -- a local TV institution who was as big around here as Captain Kangaroo or Bozo the Clown,” Bob Carlton once wrote.

“He did five shows a week, with 20 or 30 kids a show,” says Everett Holle, who hired Cliff in 1954 and has remained a close friend. “That’s more than 100 kids a week, 5,000 kids a year. Plus their parents. So his fan base was huge.”

When he died, AL.com readers shared their Cousin Cliff memories. One of those, Lucille Calvert, worked at Walker Regional Medical Center (which later became Walker Baptist Medical Center) in Jasper for 17 years.

“One year, Cousin Cliff was hired to come for some occasion (Christmas, maybe?) for the patients. What was really, really funny was that few of the patients knew who he was, but the hospital staff went nuts .... rushing off to get his autograph,” she wrote.

We’ll end with a Birmingham radio special from Joe Rumore, who died just before Christmas 1993 at age 73.

Rumore’s show, broadcast from his basement, was one of the state’s most powerful radio programs in the 1950s and 1960s, and the station’s 50,000 watts could be heard from the Tennessee line to Montgomery.

Rumore began his broadcasting career in 1941 at WAPI, moving to WVOK in 1948 and gaining fame there until his retirement in 1982.

Guests like Jim Nabors and Andy Griffith dropped by Rumore’s basement to be guests on his show. And Bobbie Gentry sang ``Ode to Billy Joe,’ while Jeannie C. Riley debuted her hit ``Harper Valley P.T.A.’' to Rumore’s listeners and fans.

This is his 1966 Christmas show.

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Birmingham vintage Christmas TV: Country Boy Eddie to Dean and Company - AL.com
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