John Brown's Body Gets Out of Jail - Stringbean Molders On

John Brown's body's no longer moldering in prison.

After 40 years, people have forgotten about a pair of Stringbeans.

What...you ask, am I talking about?

The couple on the left, David Akeman (aka "Stringbean") and his wife, and the guy who just got paroled:

Since my book, "Who's Who in Comedy," is about the only reference work that tells the tale, I'll quote from it:

After joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1942 he began to record tunes such as "I Wonder Where Wanda Went" along with albums that mostly featured his straight banjo picking. He developed into a memorable comedian. He looked the part -- tall and thin with a sadsack expression -- but accentuated it by wearing a pair of pants that couldn't go up past his thighs. That's where he belted them -- his long shirt dragging down to his thighs and tucked into the dwarfed pants.

He developed a nationwide audience on "Hee-Haw." Then Stringbean's career was cut short in one night of brutality. Following a performance at The Grand Ole Opry, he and his 59 year-old wife Estelle came home to discover two burglars in the house. They had been waiting for them. They had even listened to WSM and heard Stringbean perform that evening on the radio. What they were after was the thousands in cash they heard he kept at home instead of the bank. In the struggle that followed, the comedian was shot dead. Estelle ran but was caught before she could even get past the lawn of her own home. On her hands and knees, pleading for her life, Estelle was shot three times and left face down in the grass.

The killers, a pair of young cousins named Brown, fled with whatever they could carry. They didn't find the money in the house. They also missed the $3,000 Stringbean had in a pocket of his pants and a packet containing $2,000 Estelle had tucked away in her brassiere.

That was 1973. And now? "Never say never" on a prison sentence. (Hear that, Mark David Chapman? Son of Sam?) Who knows, maybe John Brown's been a model prisoner and is now deemed too old (64) to cause a lot of ruckus. Set him loose so some young wild animal can have a longer stay.

Country singer Jean Shepard (not late comedian Jean Shepherd) complained, "Why should they turn him loose? He cold-bloodedly killed two friends of ours." With no surviving children to appear in front of a parole board, the case for Stringbean's killer to remain in jail was left to a dwindling group of old friends. In 2011, it was Jan Howard who made a successful plea to keep Brown behind bars. But this time? The parole board voted 4-3 for his release, and it doesn't look like any letter-writing campaign (which some of Stringbean's old friends are suggesting) will do much. "I'm sure the Lord will forgive him," Jean Shepard says. "I don't think any of us will."

These days, we know "Mr. Bean" and Orson Bean...and it's only some comedy collectors and elderly country music fans who remember Stringbean.