Roy Clark was an American singer and musician who was best known for having hosted Hee Haw, a nationally televised country variety show from 1969 to 1997. Clark was an important and influential figure in country music, both as a performer and in helping to popularize the genre.
During the 1970s, Clark frequently guest-hosted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and enjoyed a 30-million viewership for Hee Haw. Clark was highly regarded and renowned as a guitarist, banjo player, and fiddler. He was skilled in the traditions of many genres including classical guitar, country music, Latin music, bluegrass, and pop. He had hit songs as a pop vocalist (e.g., "Yesterday, When I Was Young" and "Thank God and Greyhound"), and his instrumental skill had an enormous effect on generations of bluegrass and country musicians. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1987 and in 2009, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He published his autobiography, My Life in Spite of Myself, in 1994
As Roy Clark's bandleader for two and a half years in the late 70s, Lindy Hearne and his band A Touch of Country performed with Roy from Las Vegas to Carnegie Hall, and also on Hee Haw.
Fast forward to today from outside the rural arts hamlet of Winnsboro in the upper east side of Texas, award-winning performing songwriters Lindy Hearne and Lynn Adler (known as Adler & Hearne | The Song Farmers) tour nationally, serving up county-blues-jazz-infused original songs in a genre they define simply as Texas Folk. Honored to be selected by the Texas Commission on the Arts to serve on the state’s official Texas Touring Roster, the duo enjoys the title of Official Texas Touring Artists for the September 2018-2020 touring season.
In Adler & Hearne's Coffeyville-area performances during the last week of August, expect to hear a number of Roy's hits, plus stories and original songs from the road of life from these two seasoned singer-songwriters who call their East Texas piney woods home the Spring Hollow Organic Song Farm.
The duo will perform at the Coffeyville Community College Spencer/Rounds Performing Arts Theatre at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 27th. The performance is free and open to the public. For more information about the humanities project at CCC, please call 620-251-7700, ext. 2166.