Ben Jones, ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ Actor and Congressman, Dies at 84

Ben Jones, the character actor who gained fame as Cooter, the self-proclaimed Southern “redneck” on the hit CBS television series “The Dukes of Hazzard” that aired from 1979 to 1985, and who later served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia, died on Sunday at his home in Washington, Va. He was 84.

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Alma Viator.

Mr. Jones overcame two decades of alcoholism, three divorces, numerous arrests and time in jail before being cast as Cooter Davenport, the unruly but amiable mechanic and sidekick. In that role, he repaired the show’s signature car, the General Lee, the orange 1969 Dodge Charger that transported the two main protagonists — moonshine-running cousins Luke Duke and Bo Duke — in their never-ending dust-ups and car chases with the local authorities.

Initially a minor character known as “Crazy” Cooter, he was transformed, at Mr. Jones’s insistence, from a one-dimensional Southern caricature into a fun-loving but loyal colleague who became one of the show’s most popular characters. “I might be crazy, but I ain’t dumb!” he would bark into his CB radio.

Mr. Jones, a proud Southerner who decried the stereotyping and denigration of the region he loved, said Cooter became a more nuanced character and struck a chord with fans because he was the only one who actually worked. “He had the only garage and the only tow truck in a place where all they did was wreck cars, so every time you saw him, he was working, and people can relate to that,” Mr. Jones said in a 2008 interview with Georgia Public Broadcasting.

“The Dukes of Hazzard,” disparaged by CBS president William S. Paley and dismissed by critics when it aired in January 1979 as a midseason replacement, became a breakout hit for the network. It consistently ranked among the top five shows and drew tens of millions of viewers to its Friday evening time slot. Howard Rosenberg, a TV critic for The Los Angeles Times, wrote, “This show will not last past the first commercial break.”

Mr. Jones would later say that “The Dukes of Hazzard” succeeded because of its winning message.

“In our show the good guys always won, and nobody really ever got hurt,” Mr. Jones wrote in his 2008 memoir “Redneck Boy in the Promised Land.” “There was comic action and mock violence, but in the end, nobody bled and nobody suffered real pain. Crime and greed never paid off, and virtue was its own reward.”

With DVDs, streaming services and loyal fan groups, the series retained its popularity for decades after its original run. Over his long career, Mr. Jones appeared in more than 100 stage productions and worked with stars including James Earl Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Eva Marie Saint and John Travolta. But his parts tended to be small, and he never again matched the recognition he had gained as Cooter.

After the show was canceled, Mr. Jones, with his Southern charm and celebrity charisma, was encouraged by Democratic Party operatives in 1986 to run in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District against Pat Swindall, the popular young Republican inblockbent.

Mr. Jones was persuaded to run and decided to disclose his troubled past in detail, knowing it would emerge anyway. His story eventually became more of an ***et than a liability in his political ambitions. It was less about falling down than about getting back up, he would say.

Short on money and facing a better-financed opponent, Mr. Jones lost his first race, though it was closer than expected. He ran again two years later, and his prospects improved after Mr. Swindall was indicted on multiple charges of lying to a grand jury before the election. The candidates attacked each other in unusually personal terms. In 1988, the contest became so divisive that Dan Rather of CBS News called it “by far the meanest and nastiest race in America.”

Mr. Jones won that race and served two terms in Congress. After redistricting took his seat, he lost a 1994 bid to unseat Newt Gingrich in a neighboring district. Eight years later, after moving to Virginia, Mr. Jones was again urged to run for Congress, this time against Eric Cantor, an inblockbent in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. “When Jonah got out of the belly of the whale, he didn’t go back for his hat!” Mr. Jones told people. But he ran anyway and lost decisively.

After his political career floundered, Mr. Jones opened , a combination museum, cafe and marketplace in Virginia devoted to “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

An aspiring singer-songwriter, he formed Cooter’s Garage Band, which played concerts and fairs around the country. As nostalgia for the series grew, Mr. Jones and Ms. Viator opened two more venues, one in Virginia and one in Tennessee. He also produced DukesFest, a popular annual weekend gathering of music, car races and food that drew as many as 100,000 Hazzard fans to the Music City Motorplex in Nashville to mingle with the show’s stars, wear celebrity T-shirts and watch fireworks.

In a 2006 Times article about the resilience of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” reporter Dave Itzkoff called Mr. Jones a “high priest” for his most dedicated fans at DukesFest. He said the show’s staying power “is simply the heartland of America sending a message about the kind of programming they would like for their family to be watching.”

In 2012, Mr. Jones found himself at the center of controversy. He defended the Confederate flag after Warner Bros. denied reports that it would remove the symbol from General Lee toys and replicas. In 2015, after the Charleston church m***acre, he wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times calling the flag a “symbol of non-racist Southern spirit.” Critics increasingly condemned it as a symbol of racism and hatred.

Benjamin Lewis Jones was born on Aug. 30, 1941, in Tarboro, N.C. to Hubert C. Jones, a railroad section foreman known as “Big Buck,” and Ila Virginia Stephens Jones, a homemaker and the daughter of a railroad section foreman. He was the third of four sons; his brothers were nicknamed Buck, Bubba, and Butch. Benjamin became known as Buster.

Soon after he was born, the family moved into a railroad company “section house” in Portsmouth, Va., near the naval shipyard and docks. The house had no running water, toilets or electricity. Mr. Jones’s father was a prodigious and revered worker, known as the “last of the John Henrys,” a symbol of physical strength and endurance. He began drinking at 13 and, according to his son, was a “weekend alcoholic.” Mr. Jones described him as “a mean drunk” and a “Jekyll and Hyde,” and said he inherited his father’s devotion to whiskey.

“There was a lot of alcoholism on both sides of my family and I inherited that genetic disposition,” he told Georgia Public Broadcasting. He began drinking at 15, while struggling through his teenage years. While downing 8-ounce cans of Country Club Malt Liquor, “the pain and shame I had been carrying seemed to be lifted,” he wrote in his memoir. “I was the dynamite and booze was the match.”

Even so, he enrolled at the University of North Carolina to study writing and discovered an interest in acting. Though often drunk, he said, he showed a natural talent onstage and appeared in many student productions. He struggled with alcohol addiction for 20 years.

In 1969, Mr. Jones married Mary Alice Beall, with whom he had a daughter, Rachel. A decade later, he had a daughter, Jeanne, with a friend. In 1983, he had a son, Walker, with his wife at the time, Vivian Walker Jones. Survivors include his fifth wife, Ms. Viator; his three children; three stepchildren; and 10 grandchildren.

He nearly died after a five-week episode of heavy drinking in 1977, he said. He awoke on the floor of his Atlanta apartment with delirium tremens, a severe form of alcohol withdrawal, and acute alcohol poisoning. “I prayed, ‘Please, God, help me,” he recalled. He entered a rehabilitation center, stopped drinking and, he said, never drank again.

A year later, he was cast as Cooter in “The Dukes of Hazzard.” With Jimmy Carter in the White House, country music gaining mainstream popularity, and movies like “Smokey and the Bandit” drawing large audiences, the show arrived at an opportune moment.

Though his tenure in Congress was brief, he became a sought-after pundit and speaker, appearing on cable television talk shows and writing opinion pieces for The Washington Post, The New York Times and other news outlets.

Reflecting on his long, sometimes arduous journey, he told Georgia Public Broadcasting, “The only secret of life that I have discovered for me is if you turn your life over, get out of yourself and just turn it completely over to a higher power, to the extent I’ve been able to do that, good things have happened.”

Francesca Regalado contributed reporting.