Roy Clark got the full country music send-off at his memorial service in Tulsa on Wednesday.
Contemporaries filled Rhema Bible Church with music and memories of the guitar virtuoso and "Hee Haw" host. The service lasted more than 90 minutes and included songs from Larry and Rudy Gatlin, Vince Gill and Rick Skaggs, and the Tulsa Playboys.
Clark’s longtime manager, Jim Halsey, recounted the whole story of how they ended up on a tour of the Soviet Union in 1976. It started with them getting a group of Soviet dignitaries to Las Vegas to see Clark at the Frontier Hotel.
Halsey said the tour started a couple years later in Latvia for a cold crowd Clark quickly won over, which became emblematic of the three-week, 21-show trip.
"We saw the whole attitude of the Soviets change toward Americans. And it not only was a cultural success, but it was a diplomatic success," Halsey said.
Soviet Union officials told Clark at the time more than 750 million people in the country watched him on TV. Clark would return to the the Soviet Union in 1988 on a "friendship tour."
Pastor Kenneth Hagin Jr. said if there is one word to sum up Clark, it’s "sincerity."
"He was a guitar wizard, and we all know that," Hagin said. "But some of you may not know, actually, Roy was a very shy person, really. He always had humor in his performance to begin with because it was a way of easing his shyness."
Clark’s friends remembered him as a consistently kind man. Country singer Moe Bandy said Clark loved his fans and never shied away from them.
"I just think that when he meets the Lord, the Good Lord’s going to say, 'Is there any way you could play a little of that "Malagueña" for me? Just a little bit of it,'" Bandy said.
Like so many of Clark’s shows, his funeral ended with Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona’s song — this time, a video of Clark playing it.
Clark died at his Tulsa home Nov. 15 from complications of pneumonia. He was 85.
