Jump to content
Hamer Fan Club Message Center

"Roy Clark—the kind of talent that isn’t around much anymore": This week's newspaper column


Recommended Posts

(CAVEAT: This column got some of its text from my post on the Roy Clark thread on the HFC board. One of the examples of using this forum as a sounding board. 'Scuse the redundancy)

Roy Clark—the kind of talent that isn’t around much anymore

I am in my thirtieth year of writing for a monthly guitar magazine. Such an effort has taken me to numerous locations across the country, and I have conversed on the record with hundreds of people…and I’ve only been thrown out of one rock concert during that time frame.

Some folks have asked which interview has been my all-time favorite, but I can’t narrow the selections down past four. Of those, two were with B.B. King and Roy Clark, for similar reasons. To wit:

Both were not just famous guitarists, they were icons who inspired more than one generation of players.

Both interviews were in-person.

Both made me feel at ease during our respective conversations.

Both became enthusiastic when we began talking in detail about guitars.

And not surprisingly, Messrs. King and Clark had played onstage together.

The first performance by Roy Clark that I recall was on a late night television in the ‘60s, where he lampooned “Folsom Prison Blues” by evoking railroad and tommy gun sound effects from his Gibson thinline guitar. At the beginning of the song, his scratchy, muted “strumming” emulated a chugging locomotive, and when he got to the line about “I shot a man in Reno,” his guitar erupted with a staccato wave of noise, as Clark pivoted his guitar neck from left to right like a gangster with a machine gun.

During the song, the guitarist sported a big grin that had an underlying/sublmiinal assertion of confidence; i.e., he knew what he was doing.

But for all of his goofy onstage antics (which he called his “schtick”), Clark could—and would—abruptly switch gears and effortlessly demonstrate some massive guitar chops. A flat-picked version of “Malaguena” was a jaw-dropping example (and can be found on Youtube). 

Clark and a “player’s player” named Danny Gatton were both from the Washington D.C. area, and while one of Gatton’s nicknames among guitar lovers was “the Humbler,” Clark could have laid claim to the same sobriquet.

Roy also had some legitimate hit singles, of course (“Yesterday When I Was Young,” “Thank God and Greyhound,” “Tips of my Fingers,” etc.), and  he’d appeared more than once in this area. He performed at a “Big Bam Show” at the state coliseum in the mid-‘60s, and would also become a regular participant in the George “Goober” Lindsey benefit weekend in Montgomery, which included a golf tournament and an all-star concert.

On a national basis, he was one of the co-hosts of “Hee Haw” for many years, side-by-side with Buck Owens.  An admittedly-cornpone variant of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “Hee Haw” presented its rapid-fire comedy sketches in a format that appealed to a lot of folks in fly-over country. For all of snide condescension that was heard from critics in New York and L.A., “Hee Haw” would have the last, er, laugh, as it outlasted “Laugh-In” for many years.

As for playing onstage with B.B. King, Clark told me that it had been a terrific experience for both players. “I got to play ‘Lucille’!” he had said of King’s iconic guitar.

In later times, Clark would become a big booster of the Branson, Missouri entertainment complex. He forged his autobiography, and was profiled in a video biography on a country music-oriented cable channel.

Yet for all of his success, hit recordings and awards, Roy Clark remembered his roots and fellow players who had made similar musical journeys in similar times. Backstage prior to a concert in Dothan, he noted the route his tour bus had driven to the venue, recalling that Ozark was the home of legendary steel guitar player Curly Chalker.

Anytime a legendary player can make a conversation with a journalist a smoother task, it’s an in-through-the-side-door tribute to the player’s professionalism.

Of the four all-time favorite interviews with guitarists that I’ve done, Roy Clark was the last survivor.

There are “musicians” and there are “entertainers”. Roy Clark epitomized both terms, in spades.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, it's always great meeting someone like that and realizing they get it.  They're not a jerk, even if they could be in their situation.  Everyone is just as important as anyone else.  Your words ring true.  Thanks for sharing this. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/9/2018 at 10:19 AM, Willie G. Moseley said:

....the guitarist sported a big grin that had an underlying/sublmiinal assertion of confidence; i.e., he knew what he was doing....

That's my favorite memory of him. He could crush you, but did it in a fun, non-antagonistic way.

Thanks, Willie. Another good one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...