Clark hosted "Hee Haw," hosted The Tonight Show, and won a Grammy.
(Tulsa, OK) -- Legendary country music singer and co-host of "Hee Haw" Roy Clark is dead.
He died yesterday due to complications from pneumonia at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Clark was 85.
Born in Meherrin, Virginia, Clark started playing in his father's square dance band at the age of 15.
His skills as a guitarist and banjo player in the late 1950s and early '60s earned him a spot in the County Music Hall of Fame. At his 2009 induction, he emotionally told the crowd how moving it was "just to be associated yourself with the members of the Country Music Hall of Fame and imagine that your name will be said right along with all the list."
He was also a member of the Grand Ole Opry and filled in for Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" in the 1960s and 1970s.
Clark won a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance for the song "Alabama Jubilee" and earned seven Country Music Association awards including entertainer of the year and comedian of the year.
In his 1994 autobiography, "My Life in Spite of Myself," he said "Yesterday, When I Was Young" had "opened a lot of people's eyes not only to what I could do but to the whole fertile and still largely untapped field of country music, from the Glen Campbells and the Kenny Rogerses, right on through to the Garth Brookses and Vince Gills."
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