Boone (TV series)

Boone is a 13-week dramatic television series which was broadcast on NBC from 1983–1984. It starred, principally, Tom Byrd and Barry Corbin. Byrd (at age 23) played teenager Boone Sawyer, who aspired for a career in rock and roll music, despite the advice of his stern father, Merit Sawyer, played by Corbin, who wants Boone to join him in the automobile repair business. The setting of the series is Tennessee, and the time frame is the early 1950s, when great changes began to occur in popular music, with the rise of Elvis Presley.

Ten weekly episodes began airing on September 26, 1983, and three remaining segments were broadcast in the summer of 1984, the last on August 11. The series was created by the author Earl Hamner, Jr. of Virginia, whose CBS series The Waltons and Falcon Crest were far more successful than Boone.

Ronnie Claire Edwards, an Oklahoma City native who played Corabeth Godsey, the bossy wife of storekeeper Ike Godsey (Joe Conley) in The Waltons, portrayed Aunt Dolly Sawyer in Boone. William Edward Phipps played her husband Linc Sawyer, the owner of Linc's Orchid Lounge, where Boone and his friend, Rome Hawley (played by Greg Webb), sometimes performed. Other stars included Elizabeth Huddle as Boone's mother, Faye, who wanted Boone to commit to the ministry, as his older brother, Dwight, had done prior to Dwight's death in World War II. Andrew Prine portrayed A. W. Holly; Julie Anne Haddock, as Amanda; Robyn Lively, Banjo; and Amanda Peterson, Boone's young sister, Squirt Sawyer.

A critic described Boone as "an excellent show that didn't get a chance" in the fierce competition of network television though in retrospect That's Incredible with John Davidson on ABC and Scarecrow and Mrs. King with Bruce Boxleitner and Kate Jackson on CBS may not have seemed such formidable rivals in the Monday 8 p.m. Eastern slot.