He became a household name for clowning with Buck Owens on Hee Haw, but the late Roy Clark was one country’s inest-ever musicians. Country Music salutes a “pickin’ and grinnin’” genius

Words by Mike Stephens

Clark was more than one generation’s irst idea of what a country musician even was

Courtesy of GSPI, Inc

Famous friends: Roy (right) with Johnny Cash and June Carter

Courtesy of Time Life

Roy Clark, who passed away in November 2018 aged 85, is not the type of star the country world creates any more. He didn’t look like a star at all, but he was incredibly talented, very funny – usually at his own expense – always down to earth, and a genuine allrounder.

A “good guy”? Goes without saying. And as co-host of variety TV show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1997, Clark was more than one generation’s first idea of what a country musician even was.

Most memorable, perhaps, was Clark’s role on the show’s weekly “pickin’ and grinnin’” sketches with co-host and main draw Buck Owens. Like Owens, Clark was a true musician at heart and the on-screen buffoonery in Hee Haw’s fictional Kornfield Kounty was all just a show. “All of my comedy started from the fact that I never had that much self-confidence,” Clark explained in 2016. “I would laugh and cut up so the audience wouldn’t think I was being too serious. But slowly but surely, I got more confidence.” Ironically, Clark’s clowning grew somewhat out of his love for country music itself. He recalled of his childhood, “Anybody who admitted to listening to ‘hillbilly music’ – as it was back then – was really looked at with a jaundiced eye. So you had your own little world that you lived in. We really stood out like a sore thumb – even though [home city] Washington was basically a country-oriented town.” Beyond Hee Haw, Clark also made regular appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Ed Sullivan Show and in sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. And as a ‘TV funnyman’ as much as a country virtuoso, Clark truly crossed-over audiences. The Music City fraternity understood what a dazzling talent he really was: everyone else just enjoyed his prime-time antics as easy entertainment.