Noted country musician Roy Clark, 85, has died after a bout with pneumonia. He excelled in several musical instruments though best known as a country guitarist. However, he is even better known for having co-starred with the late Buck Owens in the countrified version of Laugh-In, Hee Haw, one of the worst television shows in history. It was so bad it last a couple of seasons on CBS, which in turn ditch it in 1971 in an attempt to curry favor with a more urban audience. However, the show went on for about twenty more years in syndication.
Despite the show being horrendous and unwatchable for me, I did appreciate his musicianship especially on the banjo. The banjo has always been my favorite musical instrument.
More about Clark:
Roy Linwood Clark was born April 15, 1933, in Meherrin, Virginia. The oldest of five children, he grew up in a musical family.
He learned how to play banjo at a 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.
Within weeks of learning his first chords, the teenage Clark was playing behind his father at area square dances. Not long after that, he was performing on local radio and television.
"The camera was very kind to me, and I consider myself to be a television baby," Clark said in 2009. "At first, it wasn't that I was so talented, but they had to fill time ... so they'd say, 'Well, let's get the kid.' Later, I got to where when I looked at the camera, I didn't see a mechanical device. I saw a person."
While still in his teens, he won banjo-playing championships, and, in 1949, he worked briefly on a show fronted by Hank Williams.
He was good, I will give him credit because he was talented.
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