The Wolf King of Nashville
In 1974, Johnny Cash said in an interview with Patrick Carr: “Jack Clement and I work very well together sometimes. Sometimes we don’t agree on anything, and I never know from one minute to the next whether we’re going to be able to have a session together and work together for an hour. I don’t know which direction his head’s going, and he don’t know where I’m going; and we’re both a little egotistical and temperamental. We’re going to have another session, and it may last for three days and nights ... or it might last for three minutes. I don’t know. But we’re going to give it a try. We’re going to give it everything we got. We both respect each other quite a bit. I certainly respect him. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t work with him.”
“Cowboy” Jack Clement is one of the architects of rock ’n’ roll and has written and/or produced some of country music’s biggest and greatest songs. He is famous for bringing his friend and roommate Jerry Lee Lewis into Sun Records to record “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and for rolling the tape on the “Million Dollar Quartet” recordings of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. He is legendary for his production of Johnny Cash’s song “Ring Of Fire.” In 1966, he brought the world its first black country star, Charlie Pride. In the late ’80s, U2 brought Jack Clement back to Sun Studio to record songs for its breakthrough album Rattle And Hum. His time and work in Memphis at Sun is well documented in countless books and articles, and mythologized in the movie Great Balls Of Fire and the Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet.
After meeting Clement one afternoon at his home in Nashville last year, where he led a sing-along of the Rolling Stones’ “No Expectations,” and that same evening seeing the documentary Shakespeare Was A Big George Jones Fan: Cowboy Jack Clement’s Home Movies, I became kind of obsessed with him. I also became obsessed with his blissed-out and joyfully melancholic 1978 solo album All I Want To Do In Life.
His nickname, “Cowboy,” is highly ironic — Clement’s a classic eccentric, with his snow-white thatch of hair and guayabera shirts, a lover of polkas and rumbas and Shakespeare. You can feel the electricity he started in the ’50s running through him. There is something infinite about him, and his presence is at once calming and strangely terrifying.
Nashville’s Wizard of Oz.
This past August, Cowboy’s protégé, David Ferguson (engineer of most Johnny Cash’s Rick Rubin-produced albums), took me to the first studio Cowboy built in Nashville, Jack’s Tracks, to ask Cowboy a few little-asked questions. He took an hour off work knowing his brain was gonna get picked for details about his life pre-fame, and he abided, with gusto.
At 80 years old, The Cowboy is going strong. His voice is hypnotic, with the same Memphis cadence as his old partner in crime Jerry Lee Lewis.
The following article is Cowboy’s tale of what led him to his well-covered time at Sun Records, where he changed the world with Jerry Lee’s “Whole Lotta Shakin,” and his subsequent journey from Memphis to Nashville, where he changed country music.
The music started with Cowboy’s time in the Marines from 1948 to 1952, where he started writing songs when he was on guard duty — after he got his tattoos.
Clement tells the the story ...
(Clement sings) “From the halls of Monte-fucking-zu-u-u-ma to the shores of Tripo-fucking-le-e-e-e…” I used to have a ship tattooed on my chest, but it sunk. (laughs)
There was a little gate by the base on 8th or 9th Street Southeast, about the size of a small bathroom; had a little desk in it. That’s when I first started writing songs. Be working in there from 12 o’clock in the morning ’til about 4 o’clock. There ain’t nothing going on, so one night I wrote some lyrics — first time I ever wrote a song. So next day, I took my guitar, my old J-200, (they let me keep it on the top of a wall locker) and put a tune to the lyric. Can’t recall what the song was. Then I got to doin’ that pretty regularly. Sittin’ there with nothing to do, why not? I’d show it to the guys in the barracks; they liked ’em. See, I was on the drill team, and we’d travel around doing shows, flippin’ the rifles. That was really good, it was like showbiz. But sittin’ doing guard duty wasn’t fun. I got to writing parody songs about the drill team leader: (sings) ‘Old Jones was a sword-totin’ cowboy/10 notches were carved on his blade…’ We’d sing all these songs on the bus. Then I got to playin’ there in D.C., there was a little joint right across the street from the barracks there. There was three of them up and down the street, about 12 blocks from the Capitol building. It was a great place to be when you’re 20, full of all these women workin’ for the government and everything. We played all hillbilly music, real country hillbilly, y’know. It’s close to Virginia, so there’s a lotta that.
When I was done with the Marines, I had an old car that ran pretty good, and I did what I said I was gonna do: “I’m gonna walk outta here with nothing but my guitar, my toothbrush and my guitar case.” And that’s what I did.
I hung around in D.C., then went home to Memphis for a short visit. My father had promised to buy me a new car after I got out of the corps, provided I didn’t drink or smoke. I also had to get my tonsils out. So I went home, I got on this two-day drunk, then got my tonsils out. My dad didn’t know I did that, so I told him just to get me an old car, a great big old blue Nash.
Came back to D.C. and had me a car, started gettin’ jobs. Had a band, couple a guys from the Stoneman Family, called it the Clement Travelers. We’d play down in Maryland, and one thing led to another. We tried to get on the Grand Old Opry, tried to get on the Louisiana Hayride.
Ended up in playin’ in Boston with Buzz Busby and Scotty Stoneman. Was there about six months. We were on a radio show up there called The Jamboree. Did gigs in between. Boston was pretty tame. I got tired of it, man. It was cold and The Jamboree Show kinda fell through. Buzz and Scott went on back to D.C. I went back to Memphis. Was just gonna stay there for a couple a weeks and go meet them back in D.C., but I ran into this guy who I went to high school with, and he was teaching dancing at Arthur Murray Dance Studios.
So I called Miss Elliot at Arthur Murray, went down to meet her, told her I’d been on the drill team in the Marine Corps and played for a lot of dances and knew what was danceable. She says, “C’mon, let’s dance.” She showed me a couple a steps, and I fell into it.
She says, “I think you’d be a good dance instructor.”
After six weeks I was dancing up a storm. I was a real dance instructor! That’s how I got into waltzes and sambas and tangos. I did it for six or eight months; it was great, teaching mostly women, then I got tired of it. It was against the rules to date your students, but I did after I got out of there.
Then I went to college at Memphis State, I was always interested in English and stuff like that. I could always spell. Got a lot of credits, went for about two years. Left school. Needed to make a living, so I drove a laundry truck there in Memphis, picking up and delivery, and all that. Was making money playing on weekends in Arkansas., Friday and Saturday night with my friend Slim Wallace.
Sam Philips had come out with Sun [Records], so all of a sudden Memphis is a place where you could cut a record. So when I was in college, Sleepy-Eyed John, the disc jockey, had a little Magnacorder for 250 bucks, and one night driving, I told Slim about it, and he bought the thing, and we built a little studio in his garage, with four or five mics and a little mixer.
Well, me and Slim were playing there in Arkansas one Christmas Eve, and we were driving back to Memphis with his wife, Julie. And this night, some female friend of hers went along with us, and I knew she was gonna be nailed. And I didn’t drink much if I drank any, but she was really drunk after the show, and we were sittin’ in the back seat. Slim and Julie decide to pull over in Jonesboro and get something to eat, and I tell ’em, “You go in eat and I’ll take care of her.” I mean I wasn’t hungry; I was only hungry for pussy. So she’s really drunk, gets out of the car starts rambling and staggering around, and this cop sees her and talks to her, and I get out figuring I’d straighten it out.
They locked us both up, for being what they called “drunk on the street.” And I wasn’t even drunk! She was drunk enough for both of us.
So that one night after I wound up in jail with that woman, Slim came and left her in there and took me out.
His wife had driven the car back to Memphis. So he gets me out of jail 6 o’clock Christmas morning, and we go down to the bus station, but there wasn’t nothing running ‘til way late in the afternoon, and there wasn’t any trains coming thru then. So we decided we’d hitchhike out on back to Memphis. So we’re out on the side of the highway and along comes this guy called [rock ’n’ roll pioneer] Billy Lee Riley. He wasn’t Billy Lee back then, he was just Billy Riley. And Slim knew him; he’d met him. So on the ride, Slim’s telling me, “This guy’s really good.” And so I say to Billy, “Hey, we got a studio, we’re gonna do a record label.”
So a couple of weeks later, we get together with him in our studio, and he was really good. We messed around, made some demos there, then rented out a radio station studio to make a better recording, and that’s where I cut Billy Lee’s first two or three songs. Yeah, he was good. Then we had to have it mastered, ’cuz we were gonna press it up for our own little label, Fernwood Records.
So I took it to Sam Phillips. He was the guy who did mastering in those days. I was working at a building supply place and was off on Wednesday afternoons, so I dropped it by one Wednesday. Went back the next Wednesday to pick it up. Walked in the front and nobody was there except Sam, sittin’ in this little front office.
He says, c’mon back into the control room. I wanna talk to you. He says, I really like that record you made. I wanna put it out on Sun. I wanna pay you a penny a record. So I said all right. He asked me where I was working, and I told him what I was doing and that I didn’t like it very much.
So he goes, “Maybe you oughta come work for me.”
I said, “Maybe I should.”
And two weeks later, there I was, June of 1956.
Hadn’t been for me gettin’ in jail, I probably wouldn’t have ever met Billy Lee Riley, y’know?
That record came out, and it did pretty well. “Rock With Me Baby” was the name of it. So I worked with Sam and Billy Riley a lot at Sun and all that. I don’t think I ever told anybody exactly how I got to workin’ at Sun. …
And after Sun Records?
What’d I do after Sun Records? After I left Sun, I started my own label, Summer Records — “Some are records, some are not, hope you like the ones we got.” I had dozens of one-liners. “Some are in Spain, some are in France, you don’t play our records, we ain’t got a chance … ” We didn’t go very far with Summer.
After I left Sun, I hung around Memphis. I’d been up to Nashville and had met Chet Atkins, who liked what I was doing. He’d offered me a job at RCA, even got flown to New York, but I didn’t wanna do that. Nashville, New York — fuck it. I liked what I was doing. But after I got fired from Sun and my label wasn’t working out, I called up Chet and asked if he’d like for me to come and work for him in Nashville, so I did that for six or eight months, but nothing was happenin’. Chet let me work with all the people he didn’t wanna fuck with, and nothin’ was really happenin’.
I met a lot of people and got established in Nashville, but by then I was tired of Nashville and Memphis. I wanted to go someplace way out, where regional records were gettin’ made. Someplace where I could do something they weren’t doing in Nashville or Memphis. I went down to Houston and got together with Bill Hall, who had a little studio down there. Between my equipment and his, we had enough to build a little studio in Beaumont, Texas, and we did, and it took off pretty well.
I liked the regional sort of stuff, not this big pop shit. I just liked what was coming out of that area; it was kinda independent. And within the first six months, we cut a million-seller down there in Beaumont — ol’ “Patches” by Dickey Lee. The Winter brothers (Johnny and Edgar) were some of my main players on those records. They were really good. Had a pretty good band there in Beaumont.
I’d stayed in touch with Johnny Cash that whole time from the Sun Records days. I was in Beaumont, and Johnny called me one night — I was in the bathtub — and said his wife, June, and Merle Kilgore had written a song called “Ring of Fire,” and he’d had a dream about having mariachi horns playin’ on it, and he wanted me to come up to Nashville and produce it, so I did. Went back to Beaumont, and it came out about three weeks later and they were playin’ the shit out of it.
I was a little better armed to go back to Nashville by that time. Had made some money, had four or five George Jones hits. We did “She Thinks I Still Care,” which I published, and “Girl I Used To Know,” which I published and wrote, and another one called “Not What I Had in Mind.” Three No. 1 hits with him … in a row.
So I took Charlie Pride from Texas up to Nashville, and made his first record up there at RCA studios. I paid for it. Chet turned it down at first; he didn’t know what to do with it, y’know? It was pretty strange, a black country singer. I’d thought of all of the reverse-Elvis shit, but mainly I thought he was really good, really country. There’s was nothin’ fake about it. Got RCA to put him out, and it took off better than anybody thought it would.
The first big song he had was one I wrote, called “Just Between You and Me” (sings a little bit of it).
We’re sittin’ in the first big studio I built in Nashville right now. ...(Pauses as a ghostly steel guitar riff plays from the other room.) Hear that echo chamber? I built it.
By the late ’60s, Clement had earned a rep as a welcome wagon to singers and writers who were new to Nashville. I asked him if he saw himself as a mentor to these artists.
Not much, no…
I met Waylon Jennings pretty early, when he came to Nashville. Bobby Bare was really enthused about Waylon. Wasn’t lookin’ for money or anything, and he had a tape of Waylon, and I heard it, and I was pretty impressed. So Waylon shows up, and we started hanging out, got along well and started workin’ together some. My friend Jim Molloy was a great engineer, and I was making a lot of money, and he wasn’t, so I took him down to Texas to find songwriters, and that’s how we met Townes Van Zandt. Wasn’t too long before we brought Townes to Nashville.
I met Kris Kristofferson the first day he was here, and that same night we ended up at the professional club, down on 16th. A lot of songwriters would hang out there at night, or even during the day, but mostly at night. A lot of people would come there during session breaks ’cuz it was a good place to go and sing songs for people. Sometimes, I’d go home and write a song and come back and sing it. Me and Kris got to hangin’ out, and I liked the guy. He started writin’ these songs and they were all kinda long and poetical, and he’d bring ’em to me. I got to hear all that stuff, and he got to hear a lot of my songs.
And we got to be buddies. And he wrote that one, “… busted flat in Baton Rouge …” What’s the name of that one? … “Me and Bobby McGee.” That’s when I said, “I think you’re on the right track now, kid.”
He’d always bring me his first songs, and he’d bring me stuff by other people that nobody else would listen to, like Vince Matthews and some other characters. …
Any women inspire your songs?
Not much, Well, I guess “Gone Girl” was about my first wife. Married her a couple a times. Divorced her a couple a times, too. (Sings: “She is deliciously tall, sort of a long girl…”) That’s probably my favorite song to sing — it’s so easy.
Strangest inspiration for a song?
Nothin’ I can think of off hand … Oh yeah, “It’ll Be Me” — that’s a story.
I was takin’ a shit one night, all by myself, and I dropped one. And it felt like a good one, a talented turd. So I got up, and I looked at it, and it was a big, long one. And the line came to my head: “If you find a big turd in a toilet bowl, baby, it’ll be me, I’ll be lookin’ for you.” And that became, “If you find a lump in your sugar bowl, baby, it’ll be me. I’ll be lookin’ for you.” That was it. That song was on the backside of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” (Laughs.)
Jack Clement’s tips for songwriters (from http://www.cowboyjackclement.com):
1) Remember that experts are often wrong.
2) Experts tend to be narrow and overly opinionated.
3) Experts don’t buy records.
4) There’s nothing wrong with waltzes if they’re played right.
5) A good song gets better with age.
6) Reveal some of yourself with most of your songs.
7) Don’t get stuck on one song too long. Work on other songs as you go.
8) Learn to grow from setbacks, delays and getting your feelings hurt.
9) Write the worst song you can think of.
10) Write the best song you can think of.
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