286Q7

[SMWinnie]

Now, Good Ol' Boys don't rightly qualify. But you'd think one o' them Jennings boys would give the other a shout-out when it's this close...

[Ponch]

Now, Good Ol' Boys don't rightly qualify. But you'd think one o' them Jennings boys would give the other a shout-out when it's this close...

I really thought I had the answer with "theme songs written/recorded by the show's creator"

[Ken Jennings]

Did you check all six? I guess it doesn't surprise me that "Ballad"-style themes summing up a show's concept would be more likely to be written by one of the scriptwriters.

I wonder if this is too common a thing to work as an alternate answer, or if we should have accepted it.

[Ponch]

Did you check all six? I guess it doesn't surprise me that "Ballad"-style themes summing up a show's concept would be more likely to be written by one of the scriptwriters.

I wonder if this is too common a thing to work as an alternate answer, or if we should have accepted it.

I was a little lazy last week and didn't do my due diligence (had I, I might have noticed the OTHER connection).

I knew Joss Whedon wrote "The Ballad of Serenity." I remembered Schwartz wrote the theme song to Gilligan's Island and confirmed my hunch that Paul Henning created The Beverly Hillbillies and wrote & composed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." After those three, my knowledge was a little murky and wasn't sure exactly who'd be considered the "creator" of each show/miniseries

It seems that:
Thomas W Blackburn wrote the Davy Crockett miniseries as well as the lyrics to its Ballad.
The creator/star of The Rebel, Nick Adams recorded a version of the theme song.
Sam Rolfe helped compose the theme to Have Gun—Will Travel as well as co-created the show.

"The Ballad" is a much more obvious & completely correct answer. I was just a little too lazy when I noticed the Whedon/Schwartz connection and then "confirmed" my guess with Henning. Had I known the Gilligan's Island theme song was called "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" or if I had had time to research the other three I probably would have figured it out