Roy Clark & Glen Campbell, The Guitar Gods of Country Music

Glen Campbell

In any genre of popular music, Glen Campbell was undoubtedly one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived. For a guy who never learned to read music, Campbell’s natural control on these kinds of scales is incredible.

He wasn’t just a workaday session guitarist with hundreds of song credits by age 27. He was also the guy the Beach Boys called to fill in when Brian Wilson, the band’s lead singer, couldn’t make it onstage in 1964 and 1965.

Campbell was known to play just about any stringed instrument, including the five-string banjo and the four-string mandolin. These instruments have different standard tuning than that of a six-string guitar.

Roy Clark

For television show fanatics of the 90’s, Roy Clark is a prominent figure they have to be familiar with. Now 85 years old, Clark is best remembered as the funny co-host during the 21-year run of “Hee Haw.” Apart from his hosting skills, “Yesterday When I was Young” put him on top of the country music chart.

Just like Campbell, the highlight of his career is his skill on stringed instruments. He is an influential master of guitar, mandolin, banjo, and fiddle.

For the record, Clark won two national banjo championships and a world banjo/guitar flat-pick championship by the age of 15.

This time, he is still active in his career. He performs 110 concerts in a year.

The duel of the guitar gods

Now watching these two guitar gods perform together would define the word “epic.” The video below shows Campbell partnered with Roy Clark for some good ol’ fashioned guitar dueling for “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

Stan Jones wrote “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in 1948. The classic song became both a vocal and instrumental standard seemingly covered by everyone in existence.

Here are the guitar masters, Campbell and Clark playing an instrumental version of “Ghost Rider in the Sky” on the old Hee Haw variety show.

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