RIP Roy Clark

[JSngry]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/15/entertainment/roy-clark-dies/index.html

I was never a "fan" per se, but damn, the cat could play!

RIP and full props.

[Hardbopjazz]

Great musician. RIP Roy.

[Soulstation1]

 

[catesta]

RIP

 

 

 

[gmonahan]

For all the lowbrow silliness on Hee Haw, the show could get interesting when Roy picked up an instrument. RIP.

 

 

gregmo

[JSngry]

And to tell the truth, in the very early days, that "lowball silliness" could actually be pretty funny. I remember being very pissed off that THIS is what CBS was replacing the Smothers Brothers show with, but by the end of the opening episode, I couldn't help it, that shit had me ROTFLMFAO. I was still pissed about the Smothers Brothers, but, hey, compartmentalize, right?

That lasted no more than a few years, but at first...corny (quite intentionally) but funny. And where else could you here eefers?

[mjzee]

 

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for posting, that was great. Had no idea such a recording existed.

I should dig out my transfer of the Clark/Gatemouth Brown collaboration.

[JSngry]

 

[Dave James]

Unbelievably fast and accurate: 

 

[duaneiac]

I honestly had no idea he was still alive. I really enjoyed his work on Hee-Haw, as musician, emcee and comedian.   "A TV camera goes right through your soul," Clark said of his screen work. "If you're a bad person, people pick that up."   Perhaps nothing speaks better of Roy Clark the person than the phrase "his wife of 61 years".

Rest in Peace, Mr. Clark.  Looks like you had a good life.

[Milestones]

The man could really pick it!

[gmonahan]

18 hours ago, mjzee said:

 

Wasn't that Joe Pass's last album?

 

 

 

gregmo

[catesta]

I never saw this before. Two true players, shredding together...

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by catesta

[Stefan Wood]

Washington DC was home to some amazing guitarists.   Roy Clark, Link Wray, Roy Buchannan, Bo Diddley (for a few years) and others.

[JSngry]

18 minutes ago, Stefan Wood said:

Washington DC was home to some amazing guitarists.   Roy Clark, Link Wray, Roy Buchannan, Bo Diddley (for a few years) and others.

To be honest, I never paid any attention to where Clark was from. I just assumed that he was from Oklahoma or someplace. But actually....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Clark

Clark was born April 15, 1933, in Meherrin, Virginia.[2] He was one of seven children[2] born to Hester and Lillian Clark.[3] His father was a tobacco farmer.[3] He spent his childhood in Meherrin and New York City, his father moving the family to take jobs during the Great Depression.[4]. When Clark was 11 years old, his family moved to a home on 1st Street SE in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of Washington, D.C.,[5] after his father found work at the Washington Navy Yard.[6] Clark's father was a semi-professional musician who played banjo, fiddle, and guitar,[4] and his mother played piano.[3] The first musical instrument Clark ever played was a four-string cigar box with a ukelele neck attached to it,[3] which he picked up in elementary school.[7] Hester Clark taught his son to play guitar[3] when Roy was 14 years old, and soon Clark was playing banjo, guitar, and mandolin.[6][a] "Guitar was my real love, though," Clark later said. "I never copied anyone, but I was certainly influenced by them; especially by George Barnes. I just loved his swing style and tone."[8] Clark also found inspiration in other local D.C. musicians. "One of the things that influenced me growing up around Washington, D.C., in the '50s was that it had an awful lot of good musicians. And I used to go in and just steal them blind. I stole all their licks. It wasn't until years later that I found out that a lot of them used to cringe when I'd come in and say, 'Oh, no! Here comes that kid again.'"[7] As for his banjo style, Clark said in 1985, "When I started playing, you didn't have many choices to follow, and Earl Scruggs was both of them."[7] Roy Clark won the National Banjo Championship in 1947 and 1948,[8] and briefly toured with a band when he was 15.[8]

Clark was very shy, and turned to humor as a way of easing his timidity. Country-western music was widely derided by Clark's schoolmates, leaving him socially isolated. Clowning around helped, he felt, helped him to fit in again. Clark used humor as a musician as well, and it was not until the mid 1960s that he felt confident enough to perform in public without using humor in his act.[7]

The D.C. area had a number of country-western music venues at the time. Duet acts were in favor, and for his public performance debut Clark teamed up with Carl Lukat. Lukat was the lead guitarist, and Clark supported him on rhythm guitar.[7] In 1949, at the age of 16, Clark made his television debut on WTTG, the DuMont Television Network affiliate in Washington, D.C.[4] At 17, he made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry[6] for having won his second national banjo title.[8] By this time, he had begun to play fiddle and twelve-string guitar.[9] He toured the country for the next 18 months playing backup guitar for David "Stringbean" Akeman, Annie Lou and Danny, Lonzo and Oscar, and Hal and Velma Smith during the week, working county fairs and small town theaters. On weekends, these acts usually teamed up with country music superstars like Red Foley or Ernest Tubb and played large venues in big cities. He earned $150 a week ($1,526 in 2017 dollars).[7]

That's a pretty strong mix of rural and urban exposures before even reaching adulthood. Explains a lot of things.

[Rooster_Ties]

34 minutes ago, JSngry said:

That's a pretty strong mix of rural and urban exposures before even reaching adulthood. Explains a lot of things.

Sure does!  Had no idea of his DC connections. BTW, up until just this last year, there was a full-time all-Bluegrass FM radio station here in DC (public radio, but oddly enough, *not* down at the bottom of the dial).  It was a vestige of what became DC's main NPR affiliate in the early 70's (when NPR was first founded), but its Bluegrass origins go back to at least the 1960's.  Then when WAMU became more of a traditional NPR affiliate, they found another frequency on the dial and programmed Bluegrass Country (as they called it), 24/7, iirc.  I think(?) it may be internet only (or maybe on HD-radio, or whatever that's called these days).

https://current.org/2017/05/bluegrass-fm-signal-in-washington-d-c-suburbs-will-go-off-air/

In any case, there's a LONG history of country/bluegrass here in and around DC, or so I've gleaned in my few years here.  Doesn't take too far to get out of DC before you really are halfway into more rural (and rural-minded) environs.  Western Maryland, West Virginia, and non-suburban parts of Virginia are barely 60 miles from the heart of DC, and even less from the close-in suburbs.

Interesting that Clark also spent some time in New York City as well.

[GA Russell]

2 hours ago, Stefan Wood said:

Washington DC was home to some amazing guitarists.   Roy Clark, Link Wray, Roy Buchannan, Bo Diddley (for a few years) and others.

I remember ca. 1970 when Nils Lofgren and his group Grin were based in DC.

[Scott Dolan]

Grew up watching Hee Haw, so this one kinda hit home. Cat could play. 

Rest in peace, dear old childhood friend.