Roy Clark

American TV personality and country musician, born April 15, 1933 in Meherrin, Virginia. Died November 15, 2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Married to Barbara Clark (3). He had been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009, and the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame in 2017. Clark got his start in the business in 1947, and by 1955 he was a regular performer on Jimmy Dean’s television show from Washington, DC. As a young man he pursued both professional sports and musical entertainment, switching to music when he was able to play The Grand Ole Opry at only 17. Later he worked in Las Vegas as a guitarist, supporting country star Wanda Jackson, when he was given the chance to host a daytime country-themed show for NBC. This led to the Hee-Haw program on CBS. His prominence on Hee-Haw led to his serving as a semi-regular fill-in host for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. After Hee-Haw, where Roy both played and sang, and performed in a recurring comedy routine with co-host Buck Owens using his banjo, Clark opened a theater in Branson, MO where he worked in the 1980s and 1990s, until his retirement and a move to Tulsa.