Lester Alvin Burnett

 ester Alvin Burnett, better known as Smiley Burnette (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967)

Burnette was a popular American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry and other B-movie cowboys] He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who could play as many as 100 musical instruments, some simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on Petticoat Junction in the 1960s. His break came in December 1933, when he was hired by Gene Autry to play accordion on National Barn Dance on Chicago's WLS-AM, on which Autry was the major star. As sound films became popular, Hollywood sought musical talent for Western films; and in 1934, producer Nat Levine cast Autry and Burnette in their film debut (unbilled) as part of a bluegrass band in Mascot Pictures' In Old Santa Fe starring Ken Maynard. Burnette sang and played accordion, and the film included two of his compositions. Burnette devised and built some of his unusual musical instruments in his home workshop.

His "Jassackaphone," for example, which he played in the film The Singing Cowboy, resembled an organ with pipes, levers, and pull mechanisms. In early 1957, when quiz shows were popular, he filmed a pilot for a proposed series to originate from Springfield called Pig 'N Poke, a quiz show with a country theme, although ABC did not buy the show. Burnette enjoyed cooking and in the 1950s he opened a restaurant chain called The Checkered Shirt, the first of the A-frame drive-ins. The first location was in Orlando, Florida, and two locations still exist in California (Redding and Escondido) but are no longer owned by the Burnette family. As the 1960s began, Burnette continued to make personal appearances at drive-ins, fairs, hospitals, town squares, and rodeos. Among other venues, he once appeared with Dewey Brown and the Oklahoma Playboys at a Friday night dance at Jump's Roller Rink in Fairfax, Oklahoma. Just after completing the fourth season of Petticoat Junction, Burnette became ill. On February 16, 1967, a month before his 56th birthday, he died in Encino, California, from leukemia. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.