R.I.P.: Roy Clark, Country Artist and Entertainer

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, according to The NYTimes.

Mr. Clark was a genial banjo-wielding 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. A variant of the old “Arkansas Traveler” routine — a vaudeville set piece that interspersed humor with music — the segment featured the two men trading winking rural-themed jokes, to the amusement of an audience that included many urban and suburban viewers living outside the South.

Conceived as a down-home 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 ’70s, it reached 30 million viewers a week.

Beyond “Hee Haw” and its fictional Kornfield Kounty, Mr. 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.

Mr. 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.