![]() ![]() “What It Was Was Football” sold a million copies. ![]() It got big laughs and Griffith spun to fame on a phonograph needle. He dreamed up a comic monologue about a country bumpkin mystified by a game “where you try to run across a cow pasture without getting hit or stepping in something.” 54 from Chapel Hill to an appearance in Raleigh, Griffith was struck by an inspiration that would ignite his career. Motoring one evening in 1953 down pastoral N.C. Griffith played Sir Walter Raleigh from 1949 to 1953 and appeared on the dinner club circuit as a comedian and singer. Lanky and handsome, his head thick with wavy black hair, he found summer work at the outdoor drama “The Lost Colony” in Manteo. He taught school for three years in Goldsboro. He went on to UNC Chapel Hill and majored in music, taking five years to get his degree in 1949. He took a liking to music and learned to play the trombone at 16.ĭespite a so-so academic record, he was industrious, earning enough money sweeping the high school after classes to buy a bass horn and guitar. Griffith was born in Mount Airy on June 1, 1926, son of Carl and Geneva Griffith. In the landmark series about family values that entertained millions in the 1960s and thrives five decades later in syndication, their father-son relationship was one of the few that wasn’t played just for laughs. RIP Andy,” tweeted Hollywood director Ron Howard, whose formative years were spent on the set of “The Andy Griffith Show” as Opie, the precocious son of the small-town sheriff Andy Taylor. His pursuit of excellence and the joy he took in creating served generations & shaped my life. We will cherish his art, his music, his talent, and of course, our beloved “Andy Griffith Show.’ ” “Andy Griffith means the world to the arts everywhere – not just here in Mount Airy,” said Tanya Jones, executive director of the Surry Arts Council, which oversees the Andy Griffith Museum there. He was Andrew Samuel Griffith, but we knew him best as “Andy.” He died Tuesday at age 86 in Manteo. He was a vocalist, an actor, a stand-up comic, a producer and once even a schoolteacher, but we knew him best for creating the mythic Mayberry, a Camelot in bib overalls where home-spun wisdom reigned. Television legend Andy Griffith, who became best known for the eponymous show in which he played small-town North Carolina Sheriff Andy Taylor, died in North Carolina today at the age of 86: ![]()
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