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The real deal
The return of Cowboy Jack Clement
BY ADAM BREGMAN
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Cowboy Jack Clement has been there, slightly in the background, at country music’s most pivotal phases. The songwriter and producer was a key creative force at Sun Records in the ’50s, when he discovered a wild young hick named Jerry Lee Lewis. Clement penned two of Johnny Cash’s #1 hits, "Guess Things Happen That Way" and "Ballad of a Teenage Queen," and produced one of the more significant recordings of the outlaw movement, Waylon Jennings’s 1975 album Dreaming My Dreams (BMG). Yet he’s rarely found time to record and sing his own fine, laid-back cowboy music. At the age of 73, he still possesses a warm, wise, been-around-the-block-a-few-times voice. But his new Guess Things Happen That Way (Dualtone) is his first album since his only other release, 1978’s out-of-print All I Want To Do in Life. In the course of a half-century-long career, the Memphis native has spent much of his time in the studio concocting ideas to make some of the most classic country music and early rock and roll sound even better. He played guitar, sang mostly among friends, and wrote songs when it suited him (timeless numbers like "Does My Ring Hurt Your Finger" and goofy novelty tunes like "Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog"). "I have never been a full-time songwriter," he explains over the phone from Nashville. "I’d write songs when I was in the mood. I started when I was in the Marine Corps in the early ’50s. I wrote my first song while I was guarding the gate from 12 to four in the morning, nothing much to do. I just wrote the words and had the melody in mind and put the tune to it the next morning. I played it for some of the guys in the barracks and they liked it. I got to doing it regular." Dabbling in performing and recording, Clement got a big break in 1956 when he hooked up with Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Phillips made him his ace tech wizard, and Clement found himself surrounded by an awe-inspiring crowd that included Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison. "One time, I was back in the studio piddling around," he recalls, "and the girl up front came in and said there is this guy here who says he plays piano like Chet Atkins plays guitar. I said, ‘Oh yeah? I got to hear that.’ This kid, Jerry Lee Lewis, came on back and played ‘Wildwood Flower’ and it sounded like Chet Atkins. I said, ‘Do you sing?’, and he said, ‘Yeah.’ So he sang a couple of George Jones songs. I told him country music wasn’t happening right then. He ought to go back home, get up some rock and roll, and come back and see me. I made a tape of him that day and played it for Sam, and he flipped over it. So we got together about a month later and cut ‘Crazy Arms.’ Of course, the next record we recorded was ‘Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On,’ and that was a million seller. He was a lot of fun back then. He had the makings of it, but he hadn’t gone nutty yet." One of Clement’s closest pals at Sun Records was Johnny Cash, who recorded many of Clement’s tunes. When Cash had a dream where he heard mariachi on "Ring of Fire," Clement was called into arrange the famous horn part. "I said, ‘Why don’t you go, "Duh duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh," ’ and we wrote that down, and I played guitar on it, and we cut ‘Ring of Fire.’ Johnny Cash was my all-time favorite person to work with because I just loved the guy. We both had the same kind of sense of humor. We grew up very close to each other. He was over in Arkansas, not too far from Memphis. We heard all the same stuff on the radio. You would be amazed at what Johnny Cash would sing that he’d never record: Ink Spots songs, Mills Brothers songs, stuff like that. We would just sit around and sing sometimes, no guitar or nothing." A little over a year ago, Clement finally got around to putting together a band of his own, and the eight-piece Cowboy’s Ragtime Band scored a gig playing every Monday night in October at the Country Music Hall of Fame. "We got a little buzz going, and Dualtone Records approached and wanted me to do an album." And on Guess Things Happen That Way, Clement performs several of his compositions arranged the way he intended them. The lovelorn title track has a calypso/rumba beat; the I’m-leaving-you country tune "Leavin’ Is the Lovin’ Thing To Do" boasts some fine horn blowing; "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" is a simple and sweet tune Clement filled with romantic lyrics: "There’s a story in our town/Of the prettiest girl around/Golden hair and the eyes of blue/How those eyes could flash at you." Best of all, Clement’s own versions have neither Cash’s hard edges nor Lewis’s country-soul sound. Instead, they exude a kindness and a lonesomeness that are the Cowboy’s trademark.
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