#4: Daisy A Day by Jud Strunk

City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKWS
Peak Month: May 1973
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube: “Daisy A Day”
Lyrics: “Daisy A Day”

Justin Roderick Strunk Jr. was born in 1936 in Jamestown, New York. He graduated in 1959 with a B.A. in history from the Virginia Military Institute. He worked in Maine as a salesman for True Temper skis and also for the U.S. Ski Team. Strunk learned to play the banjo from childhood. He played his banjo at military bases across Europe. Jud Strunk’s big break came when Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, former NBC president, saw him perform in Sun Valley, Idaho. His son, Rory Strunk, relates, “He (Weaver) tracked him down on a ski lift and signed him to a contract and suddenly he was locked into the entertainment world.” Doors opened and Strunk appeared on Hee Haw, The Mere Griffin Show, and The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. He appeared with Jim Neighbors, Burt Bacharach, Vikki Carr and Petula Clark, among others. In 1969, Strunk wrote a song titled “Ski Bum” that was featured in the sport documentary The Last of the Ski Bums.

In 1970, Strunk released his debut album, Jud Strunk’s Downeast Viewpoint. On October 22, 1970, Jud Strunk was cast as a maitre d’ in an episode of Bewitched. He returned the following week to play a bellboy in a second episode of the TV sitcom. Jud Strunk ran for a state senate seat in Maine in 1970. He lost by only one vote.

In 1971, he released his second studio album titled Jones’ General Store. 

Strunk introduced Bill Jones General Store on his album as a place just outside of Stratton, Maine with a sign that reads “if we ain’t got it, you don’t need it. I can hear the creakin’ of the rusty old screen door, smell the penny candy at Bill Jones General Store, the pipe smoke and tobacco, wet boots on the floor, Campbell’s soup and shotgun shells at Bill Jones General Store…”

Between and May 12, 1973, Jud Strunk was a regular performer on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. The experience enabled him to work alongside many Hollywood stars and household names. These included Ernest Borgnine, Sammy Davis Jr., John Wayne, Jean Stapleton, Jack Benny, Carol Burnett, Steve Lawrence, Steve Allen, Angie Dickinson, Phyllis Diller, Johnny Carson, Dom DeLuise, olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz, and others. During the Laugh-In Looks at the News segment, he often reported fictitious sporting events “directly from Farmington, Maine, spahts capitol of the wahld”.

In one of his Laugh-In skits still available on YouTube, Strunk is the “Farkel Friend Who Wouldn’t Shut Up.” Dressed in khakis, a tan shirt, a flannel jacket, knee high rubber boots and wearing a whistle around his neck, he walks in and says “Hi I’m Frank’s friend from Farmington.” Then for 1-minute straight Strunk speaks using words that almost all start with the letter “f.” “My father’s father Fred was a first family founding father of Farmington and one of the few farmers who fed his flocks and fertilized his fields with Frank Faulkner’s famous fodder,” he begins, struggling at times not to laugh.

In 1973, Jud Strunk released a song titled “Daisy A Day”.

Jud Strunk wrote “Daisy A Day”. The song describes the relationship between a boy and girl who ultimately grow old together. For every day of their lives, he gives her a daisy as a sign of their love. In the last verse, she has died, but her widower husband continues to make daily visits to her grave. The narrator of the song is someone the couple got to know:
“They would walk down the street in the evenin’, and for years I would see them go by….
As a kid they would take me for candy, and I loved to go taggin’ along.
We’d hold hands while we walked to the corner,
and the old man would sing ‘er his song.”

“Daisy A Day” peaked at #1 in Kingston (ON), #2 in Cedar Rapids (IA), #3 in Columbus (OH) and Vancouver (BC),#4 in Lynchburg (VA), Fargo (ND), Richmond (IN), and San Bernardino (CA), #6 in Nashville, and Port Huron (MI), #7 in Kansas City (MO), Albany (NY), Denton (TX), Cleveland, and St. Louis, #9 in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and La Crosse (WI), and #10 in Billings (MT).

A cover version, Een Roosje, M’n Roosje (A Rose, My Rose) by Conny Vandenbos, reached #7 on the Dutch Top 40 hit list in 1974.

On June 21, 1973, Strunk performed “Daisy A Day” on The Graham Kennedy Show. On the Apollo 17 lunar mission, a tape copy of his hit single “Daisy A Day” was brought along by the astronauts. According to media reports, this made “Daisy A Day” the first recorded song ever played on the moon. Strunk’s followup single from the album, Daisy A Day, was titled “Next Door Neighbor’s Kid”. It was a minor country hit which failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100. However, in 1975, Jud Strunk had a Top 50 hit on the Hot 100 with “The Biggest Parakeets in Town”. His last charting single, “Pamela Brown”, was a minor country hit in 1975.

In 1977, Jud Strunk released his fifth studio album titled A Semi-Reformed Tequila Crazed Gypsy Looks Back.

Maine comedian Ted Sample told a reporter in 2021 about what it was like to attend one of Jud Strunk’s concerts: “The essence of performing is to form this unbreakable bond with the audience. Jud could do that amazingly. He had some pretty bawdy, off-color stuff but he could shift gears and suddenly you’re in the land of mom, apple pie and Chevrolet and everybody is sobbing.”

After leaving show business, he started a business restoring antique airplanes. Jud Strunk was a private pilot and purchased a 1941 Fairchild M62-A. On October 5, 1981, he suffered a heart attack just after take-off in the aircraft at Carrabassett Valley Airport, in Maine. The plane flipped over, falling some 300 feet. The crash at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain killed him instantly along with his passenger, Dick Ayotte, a long-time friend and local businessman. Jud Strunk was 45 years old.

In 1985, four years after his death, Jud Strunk was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame in Mechanic Falls.

Looking back on his dad’s career, Jeff Strunk told Spectrum News in 2021 “He loved Maine so much. He brought Maine to the big screen, to be nationally known as a place in the 1970s. I think his legacy to Maine is that his songs and his stories are spun from experiences from friends, experiences in Maine.”

January 13, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
Susan Cover, “40 years after his death, Mainers recall ‘the magic’ of Jud Strunk,” Spectrum News, October 5, 2021.
“Famous People Who Died in Aviation Accidents 1980s,” planecrashinfo.com.
“Farkel Friend Who Wouldn’t Shut Up with Jud Strunk,” Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, NBC, 1972.

CKWS 960-AM Kingston (ON) Top Ten | May 10, 1973