Pickin’, grinnin’ ‘Hee Haw’ host sizzled on strings
Country Music Hall of Fame member and versatile entertainer Roy Clark died Thursday at his Tulsa, Oklahoma, home after complications from pneumonia, his publicist said. He was 85.
A fleet-fingered instrumentalist best known for his 24 years as a “Hee Haw” co-host, Clark was one of country music’s most beloved ambassadors.
He brought heart and humor to audiences around the world, guest-hosted “The Tonight Show,” worked with greats such as Hank Williams and blues artist Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and inspired countless pickers, including a young Brad Paisley, with his instructional guitar books.
Roy Linwood Clark was born April 15, 1933, in Meherrin, Virginia, and learned how to play banjo at an early age, but it was the guitar that spoke to him. “When I strummed the strings for the first time, something clicked inside me,” he told The Tennessean in 1987. In his teens, he won banjo-playing championships, and in 1949, he worked briefly on a show fronted by Williams.
As a solo artist, Clark’s breakout hit in 1963 came when his version of Bill Anderson’s “Tips of My Fingers” hit No. 10 on the country charts, and he found crossover success with the 1969 smash “Yesterday, When I Was Young.” (In 1995, he performed that song at Mickey Mantle’s funeral.)
Clark’s role as Buck Owens’ overallclad comedic foil on “Hee Haw,” combined with hits such as “Thank God and Greyhound” and “Come Live with Me,” endeared him to country audiences in the ’ 70s. In 1973, he won the Country Music Association’s award for entertainer of the year; later in the decade, he won a slew of CMA honors for instrumentalist of the year, both as a solo musician and with Buck Trent.
He was the first country star to open a theater in Branson, Missouri. The Roy Clark Celebrity Theater opened in
1983 – the same year he won the Grammy Award for best country instrumentalist performance for his recording of “Alabama Jubilee.”
Clark joined the Grand Ole Opry in
1987 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009 alongside Barbara Mandrell and Charlie McCoy.