A sixth-grade dropout, Samples was a stock car racing driver and carpenter by trade who went on the radio at the age of 40 and told a story about catching the largest fish ever seen in his hometown.

He was asked to become part of the 1969 cast of Hee Haw and created a bumbling personality, often stumbling or slow-talking his way through delivery, messing up jokes, and forgetting lines.

One sketch of the show he appeared in regularly was "The Culhanes of Cornfield County" in which Junior, Gordie Tapp, Grandpa Jones and Lulu Roman would sit on a sofa and engage in a comedic deadpan routine: For example, in one episode each would talk about the new color TV set that had just been bought, but that they could not watch it, because they forgot they had no electricity in the house.

Samples' most famous bit was as a used car salesman, inviting callers to call an older five-digit phone number, BR-549, which in the show's later years was changed to BR-1Z1Z.

Junior, whose weight periodically neared 400 pounds (180 kg), was on Hee Haw for fourteen years, until he died of a heart attack in 1983 at the age of 57.