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Roy Clark performs after being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn. Clark, on May 17, 2009.Mark Humphrey

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.

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 Traveller” routine – a vaudeville set piece that interspersed humour 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. (Mr. Owens died in 2006.)

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 cancelled. But it then became a hit in syndication, running from 1971 to 1992. At the peak of its popularity, in the seventies, 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 such as The Beverly Hillbillies and The Odd Couple, and had a long-running stage act in Las Vegas.

In August, 1983, Mr. Clark played a pivotal role in establishing Branson, Mo., a small town in the Ozark Mountains, as a tourist destination when he became the first major country star to open a music venue there, the 1,500-seat Roy Clark Celebrity Theater.

He was also among the first country acts to perform in concert with symphony orchestras. In 1976, more than a decade before the Berlin Wall came down, he embarked on a world tour that included 18 dates in the Soviet Union.

The concert halls of Europe and North America were a far cry from the stages on which Mr. Clark got his start in the late 1940s, when he toured as a member of the band of Grandpa Jones, a banjo player and rustic comedian who would later become a regular on Hee Haw. On the road with Mr. Jones, Mr. Clark appeared for two weeks on a bill headed by Hank Williams.

During the 1960s and 70s, Mr. Clark placed a total of 24 singles in the country Top 40, nine of them in the Top 10.

Roy Linwood Clark, the oldest of five children, was born on April 15, 1933, in Meherrin, Va., an unincorporated community in the central part of the state. His father, Hester, was a labourer in sawmills and on the railroad and worked sporadically as a musician, playing guitar, fiddle and banjo – instruments his son would quickly master. His mother, Lillian, played piano; his brother Dick and sister Jean both played mandolin and guitar. Neither of his other two siblings, Dwight and Susan, showed any interest in playing music.

Roy began accompanying his father at local square dances as an adolescent. By the time he was 14, he had won two national banjo championships, the second of which earned him an invitation to appear on the Grand Ole Opry.

In his late teens, Roy, who was also a gifted athlete and an amateur pilot, pursued a career in boxing. He enjoyed considerable success as a professional fighter before settling into life as a musician.

After having his first hit with The Tips of My Fingers, Mr. Clark followed a stylistically expansive path, recording albums with artists ranging from the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel to the blues singer, fiddle player and guitarist Clarence (Gatemouth) Brown.

Over the next two decades, he would have country hits with versions of songs recorded by artists including Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Durante and Charles Aznavour, whose Yesterday, When I Was Young he placed in the country Top 10 and the pop Top 20 in 1969. (Mr. Aznavour died in October.)

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.

Mr. Clark leaves his wife of 61 years, Barbara (Rupard) Clark; three sons, Roy Clark II, Michael Meyer and Terry Lee Meyer; two daughters, Susan Mosier and Diane Stewart; four grandchildren; and his sister, Susan Coryell. A grandson, Elijah Clark, died in September.

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