‘Hee Haw’ host Clark dies at 85
Singer delivered country music to millions weekly
Banjo-wielding Roy Clark served as an affable ambassador of country music and culture for the show’s decades-long run.
Roy Clark, the country singer and multi-instrumentalist best known as a longtime host of “Hee Haw,” the television variety show that brought country music to millions of households each week, died on Thursday at his home in Tulsa, Okla. He was 85.
A spokesman, Jeremy Westby, said the cause was complications of pneumonia.
Clark was a genial banjowielding presence on “Hee Haw” for the show’s entire run of more than two decades, serving as an ambassador for country music and the culture that defined it.
Most memorable, perhaps, was his role on the show’s weekly “pickin’ and grinnin’” segment with his co-host, the singer and guitarist Buck Owens. (Owens died in 2006.)
Conceived as a downhome answer to “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” the NBC comedy hour that featured blackout sketches, fast-cutting edits and one-liners, “Hee Haw” aired for only two years on CBS, from 1969 to 1971, before being canceled. But it then became a hit in syndication, running from 1971 to 1992. At the peak of its popularity, in the 1970s, it reached 30 million viewers a week.
Beyond “Hee Haw” and its fictional Kornfield Kounty, Clark brought country music to the living rooms and dens of the American public through his appearances as a regular guest and occasional guest host on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” He also appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and on sitcoms like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Odd Couple,” and had a long-running stage act in Las Vegas.
In August 1983, Clark played a pivotal role in establishing Branson, Mo., a small town in the Ozark Mountains, as a tourist destination when he became the first major country star to open a music venue there, the 1,500-seat Roy Clark Celebrity Theater.
He was also among the first country acts to perform in concert with symphony orchestras. In 1976, more than a decade before the Berlin Wall came down, he embarked on a world tour that included 18 dates in the Soviet Union.
The concert halls of Europe and North America were a far cry from the stages on which Clark got his start in the late 1940s, when he toured as a member of the band of Grandpa Jones, a banjo player and rustic comedian who would later become a regular on “Hee Haw.” On the road with Jones, Clark appeared for two weeks on a bill headed by Hank Williams.
During the 1960s and ’70s, Clark placed a total of 24 singles in the country Top 40, nine of them in the Top 10.
After having his first hit with “The Tips of My Fingers,” Clark followed a stylistically expansive path, recording albums with artists ranging from the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel to the blues singer, fiddle player and guitarist Gatemouth Brown. He would have country hits with versions of songs recorded by artists, including Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Durante and Charles Aznavour, whose “Yesterday When I Was Young” he placed in the country Top 10 and the pop Top 20 in 1969.
Roy Linwood Clark, the oldest of five children, was born on April 15, 1933, in Meherrin, Va.,, an unincorporated community in the central part of the state.
Clark was named entertainer of the year at the Country Music Association Awards in 1973 and musician of the year in 1977, 1978 and 1980. His recording of the country standard “Alabama Jubilee” won a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance in 1983. Eleven years later he published his autobiography, “My Life — in Spite of Myself!”
He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1987 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
Clark is survived by his wife of 61 years, Barbara Joyce (Rupard) Clark; three sons, Roy Clark II, Michael Meyer and Terry Lee Meyer; two daughters, Susan Mosier and Diane Stewart; four grandchildren; and his sister, Susan Coryell. A grandson, Elijah Clark, died in September.