Ben Jones slips into The Loveless Cafe outside of Nashville, Tenn., and makes his way to the back of the restaurant where a group of writers are being served a belt-loosening country breakfast.
Jones, in his element, works the crowd with the finesse of a vote-seeking politician. And well he should. Jones is a former U.S. congressman from Georgia but that’s not what is drawing squeals of delight from the crowd. It’s Jones’ former television persona “Cooter” of “The Dukes of Hazzard” that has folks asking for autographs.
Jones and “Crazy Cooter” share a few personality traits, the gregarious actor says. “The character was me: a good ole redneck boy. I knew the culture better than the Hollywood writers.” To add depth to the character, Jones would often “Cooterize the script.” “I wanted to grow the character and make him more dimensional,” he explains.
This summer Jones has been crisscrossing the country to promote his new autobiography, “Redneck Boy in the Promised Land.” “I’ve always loved to write,” he says. “In the book, I’ve told my tales about growing up, the ups and downs of alcoholism and getting sober and the wonderful things that have happened after that.”
A North Carolinian by lineage, Jones grew up in Portsmouth, Va. His father was a section foreman for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad who turned to alcohol for escape. The family lived in a railroad section house in a poor area called Sugar Hill. “It was an unusual place,” Jones says. “Sugar Hill was a black neighborhood. We were the only white folks on that side of the tracks.”
Sugar Hill was a cultural classroom for Jones, who grew up under the shadow of segregation. “It shaped me a lot,” he says. “Separating people is a terrible thing to do to good people. I think of all of us as Southerners. We shared that culture and that affected me a lot.”
Like other children who grew up with an alcoholic parent, Jones spent a lot of his childhood tiptoeing around his dad. “Daddy was two different people. He wouldn’t take a drink when he was working but on the weekend he was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was a weekend alcoholic. The pressures and insanity of that had an effect on my family. I inherited it and there is no cure for alcoholism except abstinence. It’s a chronic, progressive disease.”
Jones began drinking at the age of 15. He continued on that course for 21 years. Alcohol wasn’t the only demon that terrorized him. In his book, Jones acknowledges that he was sexually molested as a child. “It explains a lot,” he says, referring to his pent-up anger. “They say you are only as sick as your secrets. It explains why I was a constant angry rebel because of what was going on that I couldn’t talk about. I still deal with that [memory]. It’s ongoing.”
The two bright spots in Jones’ childhood were Saturdays at the Virginia Theatre, where he would sit for hours and watch Gene Autry on the silver screen, and his mother. “My mom was a natural performer,” Jones says. “We would sing and she was funny. She loved show business.”
Jones found that he shared her passion for entertaining when he was 21 years old and a student at the University of North Carolina. Jones, who enjoyed writing, discovered he had a “knack for voice work.” He read for several radio plays before walking onstage in 1963 to act in a production of three one-acts by playwright Edward Albee. “Acting came naturally,” Jones acknowledges. “I took to it like a religion. I realized this is what I am, I am an actor.”
Jones’ professional career blossomed. He acted in plays and television and film productions as well as radio and television commercials. He also wrote and directed for the theater. While his career was moving upward, his personal life was rapidly declining. By 1977, his life was out of control. “I did not want to be me anymore,” he writes. When Jones “felt death” upon him, he did something he hadn’t done since he was a child. “I prayed. I pleaded, ‘Please, God, help me!’”
Jones found sobriety at the age of 36. “I had been married three times, thrown in jail Lord knows how many times and I’d been in countless relationships,” he says. “I was spiritually dead. I was contemplating suicide by drinking myself to death. I got sober the day before I died.” Jones has been sober ever since.
After he stopped drinking, Jones’ life took on new meaning. “I got to live a second life that is very different from the first,” he says. “That is sort of the crux of my book.”
Part of Jones’ new life included the television phenomenon “The Dukes of Hazzard.” When he started in the role of Cooter, Jones wanted to keep the character true to his Southern roots. He had no problem butting heads with producers who wanted to stereotype the culture. “I believe the show reflected the values of the heartland of America,” Jones explains. “I knew where this character was coming from. They asked me to play a buffoon and I wasn’t interested in that.”
Rick Hurst, who played Deputy Cletus Hogg in the show, can vouch for Jones’ conviction. ”I had heard that Ben was a powerful actor and an outspoken man,” he says. “I knew that he wanted to bring authenticity to the character of Cooter.”
Hurst laughs when he recalls Jones’ interaction with the wardrobe department. “When the wardrobe lady brought him his costume, he took off his street clothes, put on the costume and found a grease pile. He rolled around so he could get real dirt on it.”
Jones, always electrifying on the set, has mellowed a great deal over the years, according to Hurst. “His passion now is tempered with wisdom,” he says. “He’s one of the kindest, most loving people in the world. He’s committed to the plight of poor people and the underprivileged in society.”
When Jones founded DukesFest, first held in Virginia and more recently in Nashville, he wanted to make it affordable to all people. “He put it in a place where people could get to and he made the prices nominal so they could participate,” Hurst says, noting that it pulls in up to 80,000 fans.
Jones’ devotion to the working class is constant. The film “Big Rig” gave him a deeper appreciation for the trucking community. “Truckers are holding this country together at great sacrifice,” he says. “They are going out of business [because of rising diesel prices] and nobody is dealing with them. If these trucks were shut down for three days, this whole country would be in crisis. Our nation’s economy is totally dependent on our truckers.”
Anything to do with this country is a concern for Jones. A few years after saying goodbye to his role as Cooter, he stepped into the role of politician. He served as a Democratic U.S. congressman from Georgia from 1989 to 1993. “It was an enormous amount to learn but I am a quick study,” Jones says. “I got the hang of it.”
Jones met his fifth wife, Alma, when he first went to Washington. The two now live in a log cabin built in the 1700s in Virginia. “He was so bright and fun and straightforward,” Alma recalls. “He’s the most terrific fellow.”
It was Jones’ integrity and moral fiber that first attracted Alma. “I had been living in Washington, D.C., and the qualities he possessed were rare in a person of his position,” she says. “You could really trust him in what he said.”
Of course there were occasions when Alma had a different view from her husband. She remembers the time when Jones came up with the idea to open a small “Dukes of Hazzard” store in Sperryville, Va. “I said that is the dumbest thing I heard of,” she recalls. “But on our opening weekend several thousand people showed up. I realized I had better get with the program.”
Alma quickly saw how people connected with the show and with her husband. “They would tell me how much they appreciate him,” she says. “They are not disappointed when they meet Ben. He’s everything they hoped he would be.”
Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a political rural strategist from Virginia, met Jones when he was working on Mark Warner’s successful bid for Virginia governor in 2001. “If you are doing a rural campaign, you want Cooter,” Saunders says. “He knows what to say and how to say it.”
Jones’ autobiography is a textbook on rural thought, he adds. “It tells about who we are. It tells about our soul, our thought process. It’s as honest a book as you will ever read.”
Saunders enlisted Jones’ help once again when he worked with John Edwards’ campaign for president. “John loved having Cooter on the campaign,” Saunders recalls. “He could fire up a rural crowd like no one he had seen. He’s truly a Southern icon.”
