This is the start of Jack’s inspired – even more to the point, inspiring – set at the “Cowboy Jack Clement Tribute Concert” on January 30.
I wrote about it, and included my introductory remarks, in my February 4 post – so just scroll down the website if you want to read more about it. And as a surprising (and truly heartening) update to that post: Jack has just been named as one of the three 2013 inductees in the County Music Hall of Fame.
But see if you don’t find this as heartbreaking as Eddy Arnold did when he heard Jack perform the song in his residency at the Country Music Hall of Fame a few years ago. Eddy Arnold was in tears – and I don’t think there was anyone at the Tribute Concert who was any less moved.
Jack has often been depicted as a Shakespearean clown – maybe even a tragic clown. But here he simply reveals himself as an artist who has never been afraid to bare his soul. Sometimes. At his own discretion.
Wait for the concert film for the full stereoscopic version of Jack’s haunting set (not to mention all the other genuinely moving performances), but for now this will just have to do. And it does.
Picture Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago in the rock ‘n’ roll version of “Othello.” You’re just going to have to imagine it. Me, too. Because as far as I know, no visual record exists except for a few scattered publicity photographs.
He played the role in Los Angeles in 1968. The show was scheduled to come to New York next (we had already made plans to attend) – but it never did. According to Jerry Lee, it was because he had grown tired of the actor’s life, six weeks of following the same script night after night was enough, even if, like any Method performer, he never did play it the same way twice. (“I never worked so hard in my life. I mean two hours and forty-five minutes running up and down stairs – it was a mess.”) Very likely the fact that his recording career revived at exactly this time, with three Top 10 country hits in a row, had something to do with it, too.
No matter. As this rehearsal recording clearly proves (there’s another number available called “Let a Soldier Drink” – and I’m not sure that there may not be one more), Jerry Lee inhabited the role, just as he has inhabited virtually every song he has ever sung. Listen to the leer in his voice, listen to the clarity of the message, listen to his delight in the lines. Oh man, I wish I had seen the show.
When I first met him two years later, in the spring of 1970, the role was still clearly in his blood. “You know,” he said to me toward the end of my visit, “a lot of people think if you can make a lot of money, that’s what this life is all about. Well, that can’t be what life is all about, you know? If I can just play my piano and sing – you know, the proudest I ever was in my life was when I got my first record out, hear[ing] it on the radio for the first time.“ He meditated on that for a little while. “Well, life is just a vapor,” he said, winking at me, as if I, too, must surely recognize this Shakespearean allusion. “You breathe it in, and what the heck, it’s gone.“
Remember one thing: if Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan (see the movie, see our earlier Jack Clement blog), then surely he would have to have been at least as much a Jerry Lee Lewis fan. Just ask Jerry Lee, who clearly was impressed with Shakespeare – and the way that the playwright, like every other great artist Jerry Lee has admired, like Jerry Lee himself, really got to the heart of the matter. As for this recording, I think it shows once again why Sam Phillips regarded Jerry Lee Lewis as a genius. Not a natural – a genius. And he was, is, and remains so.
This is the talk I gave at the beginning of the Tribute to Cowboy Jack Clement at War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville the other night.
It was an incandescent evening of real music and true feeling (the reverse phrasing works just as well), pulled together in the best Tom Sawyerish, “You can’t imagine how much fun it is to whitewash this fence” fashion by Dub Cornett and David “Ferg” Ferguson. You can go elsewhere to read about all the highlights, musical, magical, and emotional – or you can just wait for the movie. Suffice it to say that at end of the evening, Jack, who in the face of serious illness has declared that he is “choosing music over medicine,” performed one of the most achingly beautiful (not to mention uplifting) sets I have ever seen, beginning with his recorded masterpiece, Sandy Mason’s “When I Dream (I Dream of You),” and including, of course, his rousing version of “Brazil,” along with the same haunting arrangement of “No Expectations” that he sang at Sam Phillips’ memorial service.
I’m going to include a YouTube clip of “When I Dream” here – but unless and until the film of this Tribute concert is released, you should all bombard Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville with demands to see the almost equally emotional performance that they filmed at the Country Music Hall of Fame for their documentary on Jack, which unfortunately didn’t make the final cut. (Don’t bombard them – implore them, at most pester them.)
Anyway, here are my remarks. And I should add, pay close attention to the penultimate paragraph, which T-Bone Burnett followed up on eloquently in his introduction to “Guess Things Happen That Way” toward the end of the show.
“Jack Clement’s not in the Country Music Hall of Fame?
“WHAT THE FUCK!“
—————————————————————
I first met Jack almost forty years ago at – where else but The Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa,on Belmont?
Like most of you, I’m sure, I felt as if I had wandered into some kind of enchanted land, a rich Shakespearean landscape in which Jack intentionally played the role of both king and fool.
Even then I knew one thing: it was a world from which I never wanted to escape. And I never have.
I’m sure you all know Jack’s movie – Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan – there’ll be a number of clips from it playing tonight, and it may well be the most purely entertaining movie I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched it, several times in the company of Jack, and it has never failed to delight. Sometimes I think it may be the measure not just of the man but of his audience, too – but in some respects (and I probably don’t even need to say this among friends), like all of Jack’s work, it is a deeply serious enterprise.
Like Shakespeare, Jack recognized from the start that if you expect people to pay attention, first they need to be entertained. And I think all of us can attest: along with the music, along with the conceptual art (and believe me, there’s plenty of that), Jack has given us more than our fair share of entertainment over the years.
That’s probably what enabled him to recognize Jerry Lee Lewis’ finer qualities when Sam Phillips’ assistant, Sally Wilbourn, came back to the control room (Sam was out of town at the time) and announced, “There’s a man out there who says he can play ‘Wildwood Flower on piano just like Chet Atkins playing the guitar.”
Do you think Jack could resist that?
“I mean,” he said, “who WOULDN’T want to hear that? And then she brought him back, and he really did sound like Chet Atkins. So I went back in the control room and put on a tape.”
It was that same perspicacious quality – things just tickle Jack, to this day – that helped him see Johnny Cash’s lighter side, not to mention his broader potential appeal. I’m not sure too many people saw John’s lighter side at the time – but Jack saw this man, whom he recognized as a kindred spirit from the start (it was one of the great friendships of both men’s lives), as a pop star, a status that he almost immediately achieved with the “silly little song” that Jack wrote for him, “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” (that’s Jack’s characterization: never forget that Jack, a life-long dévoté of P.G. Wodehouse, is the self-proclaimed King of Silly) as well as more ironic numbers like “Guess Things Happen That Way” and “Ring of Fire,” which Jack arranged and produced (think of those mariachi horns).
It’s undoubtedly how he could recognize without even a second thought not just the remarkable talent that Charley Pride possessed but the unlimited commercial potential. Like Sam Phillips, probably his one true mentor and one of the few people who could match Jack in eccentricity and the determination to exercise his individualism at all times, in all settings, Jack simply didn’t acknowledge categories, and in the end it was the strength of Jack’s belief that persuaded Chet Atkins to take a chance on so unlikely a prospect.
Jack was reciting Shakespeare when I met him, and he was planning his voyage to Alpha Centauri (he’s probably still planning it) – but, you know, it didn’t matter what was the idea of the day (one of Jack’s many visionary concepts, none of which necessarily entailed making money, was MTV – ten years before MTV came into being), it was the profusion of the ideas, the profundity of the ideas that just kept pouring out of Jack’s fertile imagination. His poetic sensibility was constantly at work.
Without meaning in any way to categorize, let me just state it plain. Jack, the most genial of genial fellows (except when he gets into a Hamletty mood) has his enemies. Jack is an enemy of the predictable, he is a fierce foe of convention, he opposes narrowly defined logic and linearity, he disdains the dull, he is bound and determined to defeat expectation – as much as any of his literary or musical heroes, he is committed to conveying hard truths.
But with a difference.
Because Jack, I think more than anyone else in this town – maybe more than anyone else you’ll meet in this life – believes in the spirit of play. He is a kind of holy fool, with the emphasis on both words, in the manner of both Shakespeare and the great Russian literary masters – but maybe with a little more emphasis on humor than some of those Russians. Because Jack has never shied away from – in fact he has embraced – the greater truth of the cosmic pratfall, what he has sometimes referred to as the universal joke. Which is probably best characterized by the highly evolved version of the uplifting reality show (another genre that he pioneered – though the networks may have failed to pick up on the uplifting part) that has been his life.
Jack will tell you he’s been lucky all his life. If all else fails, he always says, Get lucky. I mean, who else breaks into show business by getting himself arrested on Christmas Eve in Jonesboro, Arkansas? Unjustly, I might add – and he would, too. Which led in turn to his meeting Billy Riley, his first major artist, who picked him up hitchhiking back to Memphis on Christmas Day. Which led in fairly short order to his being hired by Sam Phillips. Which led to his being fired by Sam Phillips, another stroke of luck, because it set Jack free to start off down his own highways, byways, and divagations, without ever forsaking his lifelong friendship with Sam. The point is, for Jack luck is just another part of the great Wheel of Life – you simply don’t want to miss your chance to get on it.
Jack said of Sam Phillips: “Elvis was a star, but Sam was the superstar. Because he discovered all them stars.And led them around by the nose.”
That’s a quote.
Well, the same could be said of Jack, except I don’t think he would accept the designation any more than Sam would. Because to Jack – and I don’t mean to get all corny here – it’s always been about family. I mean, you could say community, but I really think it’s the greater intimacy of extended family that means the most to Jack.
The Cowboy Arms was like a clubhouse to which everyone had the key. Johnny Cash, Jack said, had a key one time – but he lost it. But it didn’t really matter, because the doors at the Cowboy Arms were always open.
It would be easy to tick off all of Jack’s manifold accomplishments: the songs, the industry honors, the records sold, the studios built (he’s probably building one right now), all those friendships made and, more important, kept. But that would be kind of missing the point. It was the FUN of it. As he first learned in the Sun studio, if you weren’t doing something different, you weren’t doing anything. And it wasn’t worth doing if it wasn’t big fun.
For Jack, like all true geniuses, life is a continuing adventure and a continuing education. Doesn’t matter if you lose all your money making a horror film that after you’ve finished editing it (which you never did before and never will again), nobody can understand. YOU LEARNED SOMETHING.
You know, I can’t enumerate all the things I’ve learned from Jack.
About grace, humor, honor, feeling, spontaneity – ACTION (you know – the word that Jack calls out from time to time, almost as if to mock the very concept that he is seeking most to promote: the need to be RELAXED if you ever want to accomplish anything).
But most of all it’s just been fun trying to keep up, as I’m sure it has for all of you. And for those of us who might have been just a little faint of heart, Jack has opened up not just new ways of looking at things but new and exciting (which is not to say safe and insured) paths to pursue.
You know, Jack is living testimony to the fact that if you don’t chase fashion, you will never go out of style.
People say – everyone says – that Jack should be in the Country Music Hall of Fame, he should be in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame – and there’s no question that he should. But remember one thing: Jack is in the Cowboy Jack Clement Hall of Fame, and that’s the most important one of all.
And now as Jack might say (even though I know I can’t say it right – well, I’m going to call on Jack’s sidekick, Alamo, here): ACTION!
This seemed like it might really be fun. It was a lot of fun to put together anyway!
Here’s an erratic, eccentric collection of video clips to accompany the book, available at the time of posting anyway, and subject to addition, subtraction, suggestion, and revision – but whichever the case, it should in the end simply lead you to discover – lead me to discover, too – more music.
This is the second of four installments, covering the second section of the book: “Hillbilly Boogie.” Once we’ve posted all four, we’ll put them together in one giant Lost Highway video playlist!
Part Two: Hillbilly Boogie
SCOTTY MOORE: Elvis, Scotty and Bill: A Sidelong View of History
This may seem a little different with its focus on technology, in this particular case a conversation between Scotty and modern-day-man-of-all-good-guitar-sounds Deke Dickerson about Deke’s newly restored EchoSonic amp. But the Echosonic was a revolutionary development in the early 1950s (Chet Atkins had the first in Nashville), creating the “slapback” reverb effect (with a “3rd Dimension Tone”) for guitar alone that Sam Phillips was to make the hallmark of his entire Sun sound. And listening to Scotty talk and play (a brief, very pretty slice of “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone”) you’re introduced to both the self-effacing charm of the man and the sheer intelligence of his playing, a combination of delicate filigree and rhythmic drive. You’re also introduced to Ray Butts, inventor of the Echosonic, a self-taught electronic genius from Cairo, Illinois, who figured in many of the musical developments of the ‘50s and ‘60s, including taking care of Sam Phillips’ Nashville studio for a while.
CHARLIE FEATHERS: The Last of the Rockabillies
“Good Rockin’ Tonight”
Nobody could be more delighted with Charlie Feathers’ music than Charlie Feathers himself. This is a good example, even if it’s missing some of the raucous atmosphere of the Hilltop Lounge in Memphis, where I first saw him around this time. Charlie was a man of many parts (and many yelps, and many glottal stops), who could not have believed more firmly in himself or his destiny – he possessed a wonderful gift for invention and fabulation, which manifested itself both in his music and his life.
Charlie always cited a black sharecropper named Junior Kimbrough from his own hometown of Hudsonville, Mississippi, as one of his first influences, along with Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass,” who brought his tent show to town every summer.
Check out both of their clips for that same unassailable self-belief. I don’t think there’s ever been anything more compelling than the “trance music” that Junior played every Sunday afternoon at the little juke joint he operated near Holly Springs, Mississippi, close to where he and Charlie grew up (just as a side note that’s the great music historian/writer/ethnomusicologist Bob Palmer providing the introductory narration – and I was there that afternoon with my friend Shelley Ritter, now head of the Delta Blues Museum).
Bill Monroe, I’m sure, needs no introduction, but listen to the sheer intensity of “Close By,” a song I never really knew before (that’s Ernest Tubb, incidentally, introducing Monroe). Although, technically speaking, it may have been “accidental” that Elvis settled on Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as the second side of his first Sun single, Sam Phillips didn’t believe in accidents – and in this case neither do I.
Junior Kimbrough: “All Night Long”
Bill Monroe: “Close By”
ELVIS PRESLEY AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
I’m not going to even try.
For sheer Elvis, check out the DVD of “Elvis ’68: Comeback Special,” which is available in many iterations, including a cool Deluxe Edition(BMG 82876-60924-9) – but I’m sure you can get it shorter and cheaper. What’s so great about it is: there’s no holdback, you can actually see Elvis really trying.
Another fun exploration would be Elvis’ second picture, Loving You, which is frequently overlooked but boasts a fine performance by the star, a witty script and very-much-to-the-point directing from Hal Kanter, some great songs, a brief cameo by Elvis’ parents (in the audience at one of his shows), and a beneficent take on Elvis’ rise to fame, kind of similar to A Face in the Crowd in a way – but nice.
SNAPSHOTS OF CHARLIE RICH
“Mohair Sam”
There’s nothing that could ever really interfere with, or seriously impair, Charlie’s individuality. Not even popular success. Here, on a strictly novelty number, surrounded by silly dancers and singers, Charlie gives it his distinctive, off-beat all, employing the Charlie Rich phrasing that has become second nature to equally distinctive singers likeDan Penn, Ron Sexsmith, James Hunter, Nick Lowe, to name a few,along with a muted version of his lush-and-angular piano style.
The next number, the Doc Pomus-Mac Rebennack title track from the 1992 album that Joe McEwen, Scott Billington, and I put together (along with the incomparable Roland Janes, who engineered and was best friend to the project at the Phillips studio in Memphis) shows off much more of Charlie’s distinctive chops. Erroll Garner meets Memphis Slim meets – dare I say it? – cocktail piano.
When the album came out, there was great excitement, but because of Charlie’s genuine discomfort with crowds (even at the height of his success, he suffered from a kind of agoraphobia), only three initial showcase dates were booked, at jazz rooms in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.
Charlie blew off all three, as well as all media appearances other than Fresh Air (but only after he was permitted to smoke in the studio) and the Ralph Emery show, which he always enjoyed doing, simply because he felt comfortable with Ralph. The album was always supposed to be called “You Don’t Know Me,” from the time I first started sending around a demo tape (six years before we got into the studio) with Charlie’s heartbreaking version of the title song. But then Charlie took command of “Pictures and Paintings,” too, and the title changed.
“Pictures and Paintings”
SLEEPY LaBEEF: There’s Good Rockin’ Tonight
“Strange Things Happening”
This just knocks me out every time. Sleepy had been talking about Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Strange Things Happening” as the foundation for rock ‘n’ roll ever since I first met him in 1977, but it took until 1994to get him to actually record it. Watch the band’s enjoyment as Sleepy gets more and more into it. You’ve got to turn this up LOUD. Just dig it as Sleepy goes into overdrive after his second solo. (TURN IT UP!) I’ve always thought of this as one of the great moments in TV history – because, like Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig! (the #1 moment of all time, needless to say), it transcends TV. Sleepy’s interview shows him as he really is, relaxed, thoughtful, and passionate, too.
For another musical side of Sleepy, check out the second selection, which is performed once again with great energy, great panache, great guitar-playing, but in an entirely different mode. Jerry Wexler said Solomon Burke was the best soul singer of all time – with a borrowed band. The underlying point, I think, is that when it happens, it happens. And it’s happening here.
“Hillbilly Blues”
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: “Up Above My Head”
And for the ultimate bonus treat here’s the musical evangelist whom Sleepy, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash all credited explicitly with being their musical inspiration. You can’t go wrong with Sister Rosetta – there’s a jump-and-joy that translated directly into the underlying message of rock ‘n’ roll. But it’s the jump that for me is the ultimate mystery. Where does that guitar style come from (even more so on her classic records)? What gives it that lift-off which, however familiar, never fails to lift off?
MICKEY GILLEY: A Room Full of Roses
“Ferriday Medley” by Mickey and his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis
Isn’t this fun? You know, there could be dozens more examples of this (I’m sure there are). But you’ll never get a more relaxed rendition of good-natured competition and enthusiastic collaboration in one package. (This may well be because ranking order is never in question. Just in case you were in any doubt, Jerry Lee’s motto could be, “Nobody Cuts the Killer.”) And the repertoire reveals so much of the polymorphous origins of the music (from blues to ragtime to pure country and pure pop – every bit of it to be savored). Once again, there’s no irony here – just the pure fun of making music, doesn’t really matter where it’s from. (Watch out, all you narrow-minded historians and ideologues – I’m talking to myself now.) And while you’re at it, pay particular attention to the precise geographical location of Ferriday – and then take a drive down to visit the Lewis Family Museum, curated by Jerry’s sister (and Mickey’s cousin) Frankie Jean.
JACK CLEMENT: Let’s All Help the Cowboy Sing the Blues
“Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You”
One of the things you’ll take away from reading about Jack is the protean nature (not just the protean talent or the quicksilver temperament) of the man who claims to be an exile from Alpha Centauri. He was Sam Phillips’ first musical employee, Jack was the one to first hear and recognize the raw talent of a barely 21-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis (when Sam was out of town), it was Jack who discovered Charley Pride – oh, just read the chapter. And don’t under any circumstances miss the great documentary about Jack by Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan. But what you might miss, if you don’t pay too close attention, is Jack’s serious side – think Falstaff with a greater degree (or maybe not, maybe I’m underrating Falstaff) of self-awareness. Check out Jack’s Elektra album for his heartbreaking version of “When I Dream (I Dream of You”) – and besiege the filmmakers to release their beautiful video of the song, which I don’t think made the final cut. But in the meantime check out this clip of Jack with his friends (Jim Rooney, Marty Stuart, Philip Donnelly, among others) in Ireland. The wisecracks and witticisms will never cease – should never cease – but underneath lies a tender soul.
