Roy Clark, the country singer and multi-instrumentalist best known as a longtime host of “Hee Haw,” the television variety show that brought country music to millions of households each week, died on Thursday at his home in Tulsa, Okla. He was 85.

A spokesman, Jeremy Westby, said the cause was complications of pneumonia.

Mr. Clark was a genial banjo-wielding presence on “Hee Haw” for the show’s entire run of more than two decades, serving as an ambassador for country music and the culture that defined it.

Most memorable, perhaps, was his role on the show’s weekly “pickin’ and grinnin’ ” segment with his co-host, the singer and guitarist Buck Owens. A variant of the old “Arkansas Traveler” routine — a vaudeville set piece that interspersed humor with music — the segment featured the two men trading winking rural-themed jokes, to the amusement of an audience that included many urban and suburban viewers living outside the South. (Mr. Owens died in 2006.)