During the 1940s, when Roy Clark was just a kid living in Baltimore, he and his dad were hired on by a local movie house to play square-dance music during intermissions. There, they also warmed up for bigger touring acts like Hank Williams Sr.

Now 73, Clark says the impact of seeing the honky-tonk legend remains with him to this day.

"Hank Williams Sr. and a bunch of other stars came to town and did a two-week show," recalls Clark.

"This is back when they'd show a movie and have a stage show. We opened every day, and after I'd run out into the audience to watch him."

"It's a mystery what about him would captivate you, because he didn't do anything - he just stood there and sang. But there was something that came out of him that was magnifying - it grasped you like an iron hand. I sat there mesmerized."

Now a legend himself, Clark is playing the Real Living Legends of Country Music concert today at the Winspear Centre along with Jean Shepard, Stonewall Jackson, Kitty Wells, Johnny Wright and Bobby Wright.

Tickets are $49.50, $52.50 and $57.50 each and are available at the Winspear box office. The concert starts at 1 p.m.

The "Real" in Real Living Legends of Country Music might imply that there's another competing concert tour, touting its own selection of legends.

No, chuckles Clark, who instead says this particular tour was a means of honouring artists who kept country music alive during the lean years and to give credit where it's due. Given his still-busy schedule, he wouldn't have signed aboard for anything less than this tour's lineup.

Female country artists like Ontario's Michelle Wright or the Dixie Chicks (both of whom are playing in Edmonton tonight on a busy country weekend) owe a lot, says Clark, to acts like Wells, who was the first female country star to sell one million records - this was before the likes of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline hit that benchmark.

Big numbers have never eluded Clark either. A virtuoso on guitar, banjo and mandolin, he's released more than 30 albums throughout his career and has won numerous Country Music Association awards, as well as a Grammy in 1982.

After that, his recording output slowed, but it was by design. Shifting focus from making albums to straight entertaining, says Clark, is the reason he's lasted so long.

A 24-year run as the star of Hee Haw didn't hurt either.

Clark and fellow country star Buck Owens began hosting Hee Haw, a grassroots variety-hour variant of Laugh-In, in 1969.

Despite strong ratings, CBS dropped the show two years later because it, along with bucolic programs like The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, was tarnishing the network's image.

Getting the boot, says Clark with a laugh, was the best thing that could have happened to Hee Haw.

"People were beginning to call CBS the Hillbilly Network and that rubbed them wrong, so they dropped all three shows. Hee Haw went right into its own syndication.

"When we were network, we were on 165 CBS-owned TV stations. When we went into syndication, we were on 267."

While Clark credits the show for introducing him to a new generation of fans, Owens left the show in 1986 because he felt it was beginning to overshadow his own country-musical legacy.

Owens passed away this March and Clark says they saw one another sporadically over the years, typically at awards shows. While he could appreciate Owens' rationale for leaving Hee Haw, he says there were other factors at play.

"Buck had always been very business-oriented," says Clark.

"He owned several major radio stations, a small newspaper and the Crystal Palace nightclub. He actually had to drop all of that twice a year to go down and film Hee Haw.

"And he wasn't getting any benefit from it, because he wasn't making records or touring. It took him away from running his mini-empire in Bakersfield."

These days, Clark's empire remains the open road. And the secret to his success: just being ol' Roy. Nothing fancy, he reveals; just do whatever it takes and make it your own.

"You had to do whatever was popular. But I never imitated; I emulated," he says.

"One of the most successful things I did was a takeoff of the Platters's The Great Pretender. I think I got more out of that than the Platters did.

"I just did whatever struck me at the time. My life has really been about doing whatever felt right."