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Bringing the cornfield to Cullowhee
When Roy Clark, who hails from southwestern Virginia, takes the stage in Cullowhee next weekend, he says it will be a homecoming of sorts.
“It’s close enough to home that some of my family’s planning to come,” he said during a telephone interview Monday. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad – your family’s the first to tell you if you’re slipping up a little.”
Clark, who’s best known for his two-plus decades hosting “Hee Haw,” isn’t likely to pop out of the show’s famous cornfield this trip (there’s not one at Western Carolina’s fancy new Fine and Performing Arts Center anyway), but he says he’s bringing a first-class act.
“We do whatever it takes,” he said. “We’ll play everything from bluegrass to Russian tunes we learned on a trip there to ballads like “Yesterday, when I was Young.” That song, which was Clark’s biggest radio hit, is pretty much a requirement.
“I’m almost compelled to do it – I couldn’t think of leaving the stage until I’ve sung that one,” he said.
The show won’t be all about Clark, though. According to the award-winning musician, he features each member of his band individually.
“They’ve always entertained me,” Clark said. “It finally dawned on me that if they’re so good, why don’t I share them with the audience? I got them to record a CD of their own, because I figured if people like them at the shows it’s only natural they’d like some music to take home.”
Clark’s band includes Richard Kennedy on keyboard and harmonica; David Smith on banjo and keyboard; Pete Generous on drums; Tony Walter on bass; and Mitch Keirsey on guitar. Almost everybody sings, Clark said, and the group also includes Justin David, fourth runner-up out of 7,000 contestants on the Nashville Star show.
“People love him,” Clark said.
While Clark, 73, isn’t on the road as much as he was 30 years ago, when he symbolized country music both in the United States and abroad, he still does 75 or so dates a year.
“Back years ago we’d be out 200 days a year,” he said. “That just didn’t make sense. I didn’t have any time for the things I love to do, like flying airplanes, fishing and hunting. Now I’ve got time for those things.”
Hee Haw was a huge hit in Jackson County, and Clark seemed happy to talk about his time on the show. The cast, which appeared so tight and close-knit when they arrived in our living rooms on Saturday nights, actually only got together for a month or so each year. They’d gather in Nashville for two or three weeks each June and October and tape 13 episodes each time.
“That’s what kept us fresh,” Clark said. “We didn’t get tired of each other. I’d be there two weeks and then I’d be back doing concerts.”
That way cast members went back to their own projects about the time tiredness started creeping in, Clark said.
“If we’d done it constantly there’s no way the show would have lasted,” he said. “The way it was, we always had that freshness, and we looked forward to seeing each other – we were a tight family, and coming back was always a magic moment.”
Clark said as he watches the old shows and sees the introduction of the cast, he can’t help thinking of those that have passed away through the years.
“Replaying those shows now – I can’t help but sit there and say, ‘He’s gone,’ ‘he’s gone’ – I find myself doing that. It’s not so much a sadness as the realization that a piece of you has gone with them. You’re lucky if you can think of memories you have.”
When the talk turned to what he remembers from the Hee Haw days, Clark’s first thought was of a certain car lot back in Cornfield County.
“Junior Samples, bless his heart, he’s the only one I’ve ever known who came out of the hills of Georgia and didn’t try to adapt – he became more Junior as time went on,” Clark said. “He really was a character.”
According to Clark, Junior wasn’t initially intended to join the cast.
“Archie Campbell brought him by for a one-time thing, but when they put Junior on camera, everything stopped,” Clark said. The directors said ‘this is it, this is the image we hoped we’d find.’”
Clark kept up with Junior after Hee Haw ended and told me about a time he went to the studio to help Junior record some comedy songs.
“Junior had a little band, and he had a routine he’d worked up,” Clark said. “One day I noticed the guitar player was upset – he told me Junior had fired him. When I asked him why, he said ‘Because I wouldn’t go to his house and help him kill hogs.’ But that was Junior.”
Lots of the era’s big stars – including Sammy Davis Jr. and Vic Damone – asked to be guests on Hee Haw, Clark said.
“They didn’t want to sing – they wanted to come out of the cornfield and tell a joke. They wanted to wear bib overalls.”
When Davis came to tape a show, producer Sam Lovello told him his clothes weren’t quite right and asked him to go over to the costume office and get something more suitable.
“When Sammy came out in overalls and a plaid shirt, he still had all his gold jewelry on,” Clark said. “Sam told him that didn’t look right, but Sammy said he didn’t care. ‘I’ll wear the overalls, but the jewelry stays,’ he said, and that’s the way he did the show – in bib overalls and gold jewelry.”
Legendary musicians like Chet Atkins also graced the Hee Haw set. Clark remembers that he and Atkins, along with Floyd Kramer, Charlie McCoy, Boots Randolph, Jethro Burns, Willie Ackerman and Johnny Gimble formed a show ensemble they dubbed the “Million Dollar Band.”
“We used to say, ‘We’re the Million Dollar Band, but on a good night we can be had for $14.95,’” Clark said.
The group was hugely popular and got lots of requests for recordings, Clark said.
“The problem back then was all the different record labels,” Clark said. “There’s been some talk of putting out a DVD of those Million Dollar Band segments. I guarantee if they could put that together, and sell it on television, it would sell hundreds of thousands of copies – maybe even millions. We got so much mail back then.”
When CBS cancelled Hee Haw after the 1971 season, the show was at the height of its popularity. However, Clark said the show never missed a beat. Word of CBS’ decision came while the cast was scattered around the country, but they were all told to come back to Nashville for the next scheduled sessions. The producers had formed a syndicate by the time the musicians and actors arrived, and the show was picked up by 227 stations as opposed to the 165 that carried the show when it was on CBS.
“We never missed a lick,” Clark said. “In fact, everything got bigger when our producers were more free to do things than they had been with CBS.”
Clark said he’s not concerned that he’s best known for his years on Hee Haw.
“When I started on Hee Haw, people asked me if I felt funny playing country bumpkin, but I told them that wasn’t too hard of an act for me,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me a bit to be known as cornball and hick – at least they remember me for something.”
Clark’s Hee Haw co-host, Buck Owens, died in March, and Clark said that was something of a blow considering all the years the two spent pickin’ and grinnin’. By the time they were on Hee Haw, Owens had pretty much given up touring in favor of running the radio stations he owned.
“Hee Haw didn’t really do Buck any good,” Clark said. “You do television to get people to your shows, but he wasn’t doing concerts any more.”
Through the years, their friendship grew, Clark said.
“Buck was always there. When he passed away I began to wish I’d done more to be closer to him,” Clark said. “That’s something we learn as we go along – I realized I could have made a better effort, and I didn’t do it.”
The acting and skits that were part of Hee Haw’s charm came easily to Clark. “Playing and singing is really what I am, but playing the clown, doing the jokes, that’s me also,” Clark said.
“You can go back and ask my teachers – I’ve always wanted to make people laugh,” he said. “In a way that’s a blessing. If you can look at things and see the humor, if even in serious moments you can find the bright side, it makes things easier.
“You know, there’s two ways you can look at almost anything. A bright way or a ‘gloom, despair and agony on me’ way. I’ve been blessed with a great sense of humor, and it was a joy to do those skits,” he said in reference to his roles as the poet Claude Strawberry and clerk at the “Empty Arms Hotel.”
When asked if he wrote the poems Claude quoted, Clark replied, “I’m not guilty of that.”
He did come up with some of his own jokes in the cornfield, though.
“From day one, I was always given leeway. If I came up with something, I could do it,” he said. “I’d pop up out of the cornfield, do the joke, and that would remind me of something, so sometimes I’d redo my part.”
According to Clark, a lot of the cornfield humor was spontaneous.
“We never memorized things. It was all on cue cards, and we didn’t see them until it was time to film,” he said.
The producers used that to a real advantage with Junior, Clark said.
“Junior didn’t read all that well, so they purposely put in long words. That was so funny.”
The “Empty Arms” skits were a way to get guests involved, Clark said.
“Just the other night I saw Louie Nye and Jonathan Winters on old shows,” he said. “I never knew who was coming down the steps.”
Over the years, as audiences bonded with the show, he received all sorts of presents, including an assortment of visors for him to wear as the hotel clerk.
“We got lots of gifts – even things like home-canned beans or jelly,” Clark said. “That’s how much of a family we became ... people would be putting up food for their families and say ‘I bet ol’ Buck and Roy would like some of these tomatoes.’”
Though he had played music from an early age, Clark considered a sports career for awhile. He played high school football and baseball and then got interested in boxing.
“I had dreams I’d be the light heavyweight champ,” he said. I had 16 fights, and I won 15. I was serious about becoming a champion until the night I ran into a guy who really wanted to be a champion. After that one, I said, ‘where’s my guitar, I think I’m through with this.’”
Turning back to his upcoming Western Carolina University gig, Clark promised a good time for those who turn out to see him on Saturday, Sept. 23.
“You can tell them that I said I guarantee they will be thoroughly entertained by the show I’ll be bringing in,” Clark said. “Tell them I’m bringing a lot of young talent, and I’ll pick up the slack.”
Tickets to Clark’s 7:30 p.m. concert are $45 each and can be purchased at the arts center box office Monday through Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., over the phone at 227-2479 or online at www.wcu.edu/fapac.
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