Born September 12, 1931, Jones is regarded among the most important and influential singers in American popular music history. He was the singer of enduring country music hits including “She Thinks I Still Care,” “The Grand Tour,” “Walk Through This World With Me,” “Tender Years” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the latter of which is often at the top of industry lists of the greatest country music singles of all time.

“A singer who can soar from a deep growl to dizzying heights, he is the undisputed successor of earlier natural geniuses such as Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell,” wrote Bob Allen in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s “Encyclopedia of Country Music.”

Jones was born in Saratoga, Texas, and he played on the streets of Beaumont for tips as a teenager. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps before returning to Texas and recording for the Starday label in Houston, Texas. In 1955, “Why Baby Why” became his first Top 10 country single, peaking at number four and beginning a remarkable commercial string: Jones would ultimately record more than 160 charting singles, more than any other artist in any format in the history of popular music.

Jones’ first number one hit came in 1959 with “White Lightning,” a Mercury Records single that topped Billboard country charts for five weeks. He moved on to United Artists and then to Musicor, notching hits including “She Thinks I Still Care,” “The Race Is On,” “A Good Year for the Roses” and “Walk Through This World With Me.”

Jones signed with Epic Records in 1971 and worked with producer Billy Sherrill to craft a sound at once elegant and rooted, scoring with “The Grand Tour,” “Bartenders Blues” and many more. Sherrill also produced duets between Jones and his then-wife Tammy Wynette, and in the 1970s they scored top-charting hits including “We’re Gonna Hold On,” “Golden Ring” and “Near You.”

By the time “Golden Ring” and “Near You” hit in 1976, Jones and Wynette were divorced, and Jones was battling personal demons. His solo career cooled until 1980, when he recorded “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” a ballad penned by Curly Putman and Bobby Braddock that helped Jones win Country Music Association prizes for best male vocal and top single. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” revived a flagging career, and Jones won the CMA’s top male vocalist award in 1980 and 1981. He also earned a Grammy for best male country vocal performance.

In 1983, Jones married the former Nancy Ford Sepulvado. The union, he repeatedly said, began his rehabilitation from drugs and alcohol and prolonged his life. He signed with MCA Records in 1990 and began a successful run, and he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992. His guest vocal on Patty Loveless’ “You Don’t Seem To Miss Me” won a CMA award for top vocal event in 1998, and it became his final Top 20 country hit.

In 1999, Jones nearly died in a car wreck, but he recovered and resumed touring and recording. He remained a force in music until his death, playing hundreds of shows in the new century and collecting the nation’s highest arts award, the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement, in 2008. In late 2012, Jones announced his farewell tour, which was to conclude with a sold-out, star-packed show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on November 22, 2013. Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, Randy Travis, Charlie Daniels, Kenny Rogers, Sam Moore, The Oak Ridge Boys and many others were set to perform at Jones’ Bridgestone show.

Besides his massive influence on the world of country music, Jones was beloved and extolled by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Pete Townshend of The Who, James Taylor and Elvis Costello (among countless others).

Jones is survived by his loving wife of 30 years Nancy Jones, his sister Helen Scroggins, and by his children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Reaction to George Jones’ passing:

“My heart is absolutely broken. George Jones was my all time favorite singer and one of my favorite people in the world. My heart goes out to Nancy and all his family and friends.”
— Dolly Parton

“The world has lost the greatest country singer of all time. Amen.”
— MERLE HAGGARD

“Today is a sad day in Country music. We have lost another piece of history. George Jones was not only a good singer, but was a good friend. He will be missed by many.”
— Hank Williams Jr.

“I am very thankful I got to know George, he’s one of the greatest singers that ever lived. I actually loved the man and really enjoyed the time I got to spend with he and Nancy.”
— Randy Travis

“George Jones will always be one of the most amazing singers who ever lived. He was a true Country Music legend who made music very personal to the listener – I think more than anyone else. He will be dearly missed, but always remembered.”
— Kenny Rogers

“Country music and the world will miss George Jones. He was someone who set a high standard in our industry for great music and lyrics that tapped into the emotions of the human heart at a very deep level. His music has touched the lives of country music lovers for over five decades. My prayers are with his family and I pray for the repose of his soul. May you rest in peace, brother.”
— Collin Raye

“There’s a huge emptiness in the music world today from the passing of our good friend George Jones. But, the void is filled with the many memories that will be with us forever. We love you, George.”
— The Oak Ridge Boys lead singer Duane Allen

“I believe if you ask any singer who was the greatest country music singer of all time, they would say ‘George Jones’. He was without question and by far the BEST! I first met and worked with him when I was 13 years old; I am so very grateful that he was my friend.”
— Barbara Mandrell

“There aren’t words in our language to describe the depth of his greatness. I’ll miss my kind and generous friend.”
— Vince Gill

“I am just devastated by the news that George Jones has passed away! The music world has lost one of the most original and innovative talents that the world has ever known. I feel such a personal loss of not only one of the greatest vocal influences of my life, but also I’ve lost a dear friend. Visits with George have always been full of joy and laughter. Every time I would see him, George would always greet me with a funny story or a joke! His legacy will put his name at the top of the most influential artists in history, right along with Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. His voice will be influencing singers 100 years from now and beyond! I’m reminded of the lyrics that Waylon wrote in the tune ‘It’s Alright.’ ‘If we all sang like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones!’”
— Travis Tritt

For several years now, Bear Family has been working on a boxed set with George Jones‘ early recordings which is scheduled for an early 2014 release date.

Each inductee had a great impact on country music. Kenny Rogers, famous for songs like ‘The Gambler’, ‘Lucille’, or ‘Lady’, crossed over into pop music. With his white hair, he was a pop culture sensation during the 1970s, and ’80s, starring in TV movies and performing all over the world. Kenny Rogers was inducted in the modern era category.

Jack Clement, famous record producer and artist who produced Johnny Cash’s icon ‘Ring of Fire’, played a leading role as a producer and engineer at Sun Records during the 1950s. Clement was inducted into the non-performer category.
Bobby Bare inspired his contemporaries like “outlaws” Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to move freely from country to rock or pop, and back again. He was inducted in the veterans era.

Rogers, Bare and Clement will be formally inducted in a ceremony later this year.

Historic marker unveiling kicks off celebration of seminal recording sessions

The so-called “Big Bang of Country Music” in Bristol, Tennessee in 1927 was quickly followed by a powerful, significant aftershock – the 1928-29 Johnson City Sessions, a seminal series of recordings that produced the earliest commercial releases of several country standards.

At 4 p.m. April 5, a months-long celebration of the Sessions’ 85^th anniversary will begin with a news conference featuring the unveiling of a State of Tennessee Historic Marker at the corner of East Main Street and Colonial Way – the site where the 1928 Sessions were recorded. Friday’s event also will feature the ETSU Old Time Pride Band performing several songs first recorded during the Johnson City Sessions, as well as an announcement from the Friends of Olde Downtown revealing the top musical acts that will appear on the Main Stage at this year’s Blue Plum Festival June 7-9.

This year’s focus on the Johnson City Sessions coincides with release of a CD box set and the 85^th anniversary of the 1928 Sessions, and will culminate in “Johnson City Sessions Weekend” October 18-20. The weekend will include two related live shows, including a recording of “Mountain Stage” at East Tennessee State University’s Culp Auditorium, as well as informational lectures and a live recording session on WETS-FM’s Studio One. In addition, the driving forces behind the production of the 4-CD box set, Bear Family Records’ Richard Weize, and pioneering country music scholar (and box set co-producer) Tony Russell, plan to fly in for the weekend from Germany and England, respectively.

“While many people around the world have heard of the Bristol Sessions,” said Ted Olson, who co-produced the box set and who co-authored the accompanying book, “very few people – even locally – have heard of the Johnson City Sessions. Yet the recordings from Johnson City are wonderful in their own right.

“I think that people everywhere who appreciate early recordings of country music will want to know more about the music made in Johnson City shortly before the Great Depression. A few of the records produced in Johnson City are already acknowledged classics of old-time music, but many of the approximately 100 other records from Johnson City are exciting, one-of-a-kind recordings, and they deserve to be more widely known.”

The April 5 event also coincides with First Friday downtown, and Washington County Economic Development Council Director of Redevelopment Shannon Castillo said the entire Johnson City Sessions celebration offers a great opportunity to introduce people to the history and charm of Johnson City’s quickly growing historic downtown district.

“The Johnson City Sessions were recorded during one of Johnson City’s boom periods, and it’s gratifying to see the Sessions getting their due publicity and respect at a time when the city’s historic central district is on the cusp of another strong growth period,” Castillo said.

Motivated by the success of the 1927 Bristol Sessions, the Johnson City Sessions were recorded in two separate weeklong segments, one in 1928 and one in 1929, under the direction of Columbia Records producer Frank Walker. Newspaper advertisements brought musicians in from the surrounding countryside and mountains for four days of sessions at 334 East Main Street in mid-October 1928. Because some of the records made during those sessions sold well, Walker returned to Johnson City in late October 1929 to conduct additional recording sessions for the Columbia label.

Bear Family Records produced a box set of the Bristol Sessions in 2011, which was released to critical acclaim and nominated for two Grammy awards. Company President Richard Weize opted to follow that effort up with the Johnson City Sessions box set, due for release in early October.

“The best-known recordings from the Johnson City Sessions,” Olson said, ”are the three records incorporated in 1952 onto Folkways Records’ famous Anthology of American Folk Music: ‘Old Lady and the Devil’ by Bill and Belle Reed, ‘The Coo-Coo Bird” by Clarence “Tom” Ashley, and “Down on Penny’s Farm” by the Bentley Boys.  But as the box set will demonstrate to people, many other stellar recordings were made in Johnson City that have been unfairly overlooked over the years for a variety of reasons—in part because the Depression crippled the commercial recording industry before some of the records could become more widely known.”

A book inside the box set will feature the full story of the Johnson City Sessions, including newly discovered information about the musicians as well as rare photographs. It will disclose never-before-documented aspects of the story, including the true location of the 1929 Johnson City Sessions, which were held at a different site from the 1928 Sessions.

“The people who produced this forthcoming box set think that the Johnson City Sessions were, in their own way, as interesting and artistically successful as the Bristol Sessions,” Olson said.

Many other Johnson City Sessions-related events are slated between now and the big weekend in October. Olson has several prominent lectures scheduled around the Southeast, and Jonesborough’s Music on the Square plans a Johnson City Sessions-themed evening on August 30.

For more information on upcoming events or on the Johnson City Sessions in general, visit the Sessions Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Johnson-City-Sessions/301273439985994?sid=0.1582904001422516.

Eddie Bond was born in South Memphis in 1933. His early musical influences were George Morgan and Hank Williams. After high school he spent time in the Navy. Finally, in 1952, he founded The Stompers, a country swing band performing at locals bars. When rock ‘n’ roll was taking off, country music faded, and the young Eddie Bond followed the trends. Sun Records owner, Sam Phillips rejected to sign him. Ekko Records, a small Hollywood-based record label, offered him a deal. His first single came to the attention of Mercury Records who released several blazing rockabilly classics between 1956, and 1958, amongst them classics like ‘Rockin ‘ Daddy’, ‘Boppin’ Bonnie’, and ‘Slip, Slip, Slippin’ In’. Later, Eddie Bond worked as a radio deejay for country music station KWAM. He continued playing music, returning to his country music roots.

During his career which spanned more than half a century, Eddie Bond was a rockabilly artist with a love for country music, and he discovered future guitar greats like Reggie Young, and Travis Wammack. Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs were the house band at his ‘Diplomat Club’. He ran several clubs in the Memphis area and helped launch the career of wrestler Jerry Lawler. In the late sixties, Eddie Bond became very popular during the rockabilly revival in England. He continued to perform into the new millennium until his poor health forced him to retreat from the public.

In 1956, in England, Tony Sheridan founded The Saints, a Skiffle group. He backed several notable American artists on their European tours, including Conway Twitty, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent. In 1960, he came to Hamburg as a member of The Jets. While there he was backed by several groups, including a young group of players from Liverpool calling themselves The Beatles. As the oldest and most experienced person, Sheridan taught them techniques and tricks on the guitar and in 1961 producer Bert Kaempfert produced a couple of tracks for Polydor where Sheridan was backed by the Beatles, aka the Beat Brothers. Among the tracks recorded was My Bonnie which came to the attention of Brian Epstein. Tony Sheridan & The Beatles met again in April 1962 when the famous ‘Star-Club’ opened its doors in Hamburg. In December 1962, the Beatles played the ‘Star-Club’ for the last time.

Backed by the Scottish Band, the Big Six, Tony Sheridan recorded his hit single, Skinnie Minnie for Polydor in 1964. Later he toured Australia and most of the countries in Europe before landing in Vietnam in 1967 where he performed for the Allied troops. In 1969, he returned to Germany focusing on un-plugged music, playing folk and blues influenced songs. During the 1970s, he became the host of a weekly blues radio show on Germany’s national public radio station, NDR 2 in Hamburg. During the 1980s he was busy touring Europe, often backed by Larry & The Handjive, a cover band from Northern Germany. In 2002, ‘Vagabond’, his last studio album was released on Bear Family Records, containing all original recordings. During his last years he lived in Seestermühle in Pinneberg county in the state of Schleswig Holstein, Germany.

With the 2-CD set ‘Beatles Bop – Hamburg Days’ (BCD 16447), Bear Family has painstakingly documented Tony Sheridan’s enormously important role in supporting the young Beatles and his contribution to popular music during the early 1960s. Bear Family has included all available recordings of Tony Sheridan & The Beatles / Beat Brothers, an incredible 38 tracks from the so-called ‘Polydor Years,’ all lovingly restored from tapes that – in some cases – were previously considered lost or a figment of someone’s imagination. Finally, collectors can hear stereo and mono versions, some songs partly overdubbed, some takes with different overdubs, and much more! The beginning of the Beatles’ worldwide career is here, thanks in good part to Tony Sheridan. The Sheridan retrospective on Bear Family is completed by the CD ‘Damals in Hamburg’ (BCD 16284); the audio book (in German) ‘Beat in Hamburg – Die grosse Freiheit – Star-Club, Sixties, Reeperbahn – Eine Dokumentation von Herbert Hoven und Hans Jacobshagen’ (BCD 16087); and, finally, his last studio album from 2002, ‘Vagabond’ (BCD 16616).

The world of popular music has lost one of the important figures of a great era in musical history. In Hamburg and beyond, we should honor him and respect his memory.

It’s fairly well known that Clement has suffered reversals of fortune lately. His home-studio, the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa, was partly destroyed by fire in June 2011. Late last year, he received a diagnosis of terminal liver cancer. He still hosts his satellite radio show on Sirius-XM but it’s no secret that his mental acuity has been slipping now that he’s in his eighty-second year. “When all else fails,” Clement is fond of saying, “get lucky.” It might take more than luck to save the Cowboy at this point.

Some told stories. Allen Reynolds, who went on to produce Garth Brooks, explained how Jack Clement became Cowboy, a story too long to reprise. Dickey Lee said that Clement was like Moses leading his people, including himself and Reynolds, from Memphis to Beaumont to Nashville. Producer Jim Rooney, for many years an eye-witness to the goings on at the Cowboy Arms, spoke at length, and Peter Guralnick drew parallels between Clement and his muse, William Shakespeare. Those who couldn’t be there sent video tribs, so we heard from President Bill Clinton, Marty Stuart, U2′s Bono (Clement produced part of U2′s ‘Rattle And Hum’), producer Rick Rubin (who masterminded Johnny Cash’s late career revival), and actors Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, John C. Reilly and Dennis Quaid. Actress Connie Britton, currently starring in ABC’s prime-time soap opera ‘Nashville’ read a letter from Michelle Obama. A filmed tribute from today’s Teenage Queen, Taylor Swift, hit a surreal note. One remarkable absence was Don Williams, who’d been plucked from obscurity by Clement and promoted to stardom. Apparently, either Williams or Clement could not set aside the rancor with which they’d parted. The other notable no-show on film or in person was Jerry Lee Lewis, who might still be in Louisiana if not for Clement.

Nearly everyone was confined to one song, all of them written, produced or published by Clement. Shawn Camp and Billy Burnette kicked off with Billy Riley’s Red Hot. Clement had come to Sun with Riley’s tapes, parlaying them into a job for himself and a contract for Riley. Bluegrass star Del McCoury sung It’ll Be Me, the song Clement wrote for Jerry Lee Lewis. John Prine probably took the evening’s honors with a vocal-guitar version of Ballad Of A Teenage Queen, somehow alchemizing Clement’s confection into an Appalachian ballad. Bluegrassers Tim O’Brien and Sam Bush did Miller’s Cave and Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog. Dickey Lee sang his retirement account, She Thinks I Still Care, published by Clement and pitched by him to George Jones. Charley Pride, whose career as country music’s only African American superstar is a testament to Clement’s eclecticism, was the night’s only artist to perform two songs. Vince Gill sang one of the songs that Clement cowrote for Pride, Does My Ring Hurt Your Finger. The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Nashville up-and-comer Nikki Lane harmonized on Clement’s most revealing song, Just Someone I Used To Know. Jakob Dylan sang Waymore’s Blues, a song Clement produced for Waylon Jennings. Rodney Crowell and his former bandleader Emmylou Harris harmonized on an Allen Reynolds song that Clement produced for Waylon, Dreaming My Dreams With You. Kris Kristofferson took the stage, looked at Clement and said, “I owe every good thing that ever happened in my life to Jack,” before singing Big River with W.S. Holland on the snare. Buddy Miller, T-Bone Burnett, and John Hiatt closed out the tributes with I Guess Things Happen That Way and Amanda. “Jack Clement isn’t in the Country Music Hall of Fame? What . . . the . . . fuck!” said Burnett in closing.

No one knew if Clement himself would take the stage, but with some uncertainty he did. Seated precariously on a bar stool, he picked up a guitar. “Now what?” he said. “Relax!” yelled someone in the audience, parroting one of Clement’s signature lines. Clement sang When I Dream with touching frailty before gaining strength on Good Hearted Woman, Gone Girl, and Brazil, closing with the Rolling Stones’ No Expectations (“I’ve got no expectations to pass through here again.”) With that, he exited the room to a standing ovation, leaving everyone in the audience feeling that this would be their last glimpse of the Cowboy.

JACK CLEMENT: Everybody Loves A Nut

Martin Hawkins and Colin Escott

Jack Henderson Clement is one of the few people associated with Sun Records who are more famous for what they did after the Sun years than during the heyday of rockabilly. Clement has been recognised as a highly talented record producer, musician, occasional recording artist and genuine ‘character’ through over six decades. Known as ‘the minstrel,’ or ‘cowboy,’ Clement has made his name largely in country music, discovering Charley Pride and Don Williams and delivering their music to a world audience, and becoming a focus for those musicians on the ‘alternative’ side of Nashville. Clement played an important but subordinate role at Sun between 1956 and 1958 as songwriter, studio engineer and musical catalyst. Through this time, he was constantly at odds with Sam Phillips about wanting to develop the Sun sound, to make it more ‘musical.’ It is entirely possible that Johnny Cash would not have broken into the pop market in such a big way without Jack Clement.

Born in Whitehaven, Memphis on April 5, 1931, Clement lived there until 1948 when he signed up for a four year stint in the U.S. Marines. At home, he’d loved music of all kinds but especially the radio broadcasts of Roy Acuff and Merle Travis. The guitar wizardry of Travis taught him that music could be either simple or complicated but that it had to be good. He would never tolerate second-raters even when recording the simplest of three-chord rockers. He couldn’t get to see Merle Travis perform, but he did go down to Smilin’ Eddie Hill’s ‘High Noon Roundup’ show which took place every day in a Memphis department store window and went out over radio WMC. He would join the crowd around the store and listen to Hill, Harmonica Frank, Slim Rhodes, Wayne Raney and the Delmore Brothers, and especially to the Louvin Brothers’ light harmonies and plaintive hill-country songs. The Marine base where Clement was stationed was just outside Washington, D.C., and here late in 1948 he was first exposed to bluegrass music. “That was when I fell in love with the five-string banjo,” he recalled, “and I just had to get one and practice on it straight away.”

Soon, he was proficient enough to play duets with Roy Clark, later a country superstar but then a resident artist at a Washington club called ‘The Famous.’ On Saturday nights, he would travel down to Maryland with Scotty Stoneman’s band. Scotty was the mainstay of the popular Stonemans. He played fiddle, with mandolin, banjo and bass support from Jack Clement, Buzz Busby and Jimmy Stoneman. The group was completed by Ralph Jones on dobro and Clement recalls Jones being one of the finest oldtime country musicians he ever knew. In 1952, Jack returned briefly to Memphis. Soon, he was off to Wheeling, West Virginia with Buzz Busby doing, “a bluegrass comedy duet thing, kinda like Homer & Jethro.” Also at that time Jack played in Baltimore and Boston and he made his first record. “This was in ’53. We had been playing a radio show in Baltimore when Aubrey Mayhew, who managed Hawkshaw Hawkins, asked us to do a show on his WCOP ‘Hayloft Jamboree’ in Boston. While we were doing that James Daliano, a famous french horn player, came in and said he wanted to record us for his Sheraton label. Daliano was the owner but he let Aubrey run the label. We recorded my first two published songs, ‘I Can’t Say Nothing At All’ and ‘I Think I’ll Write A Song.’ They were by Buzz and Jack, and we did them in the style of Webb Pierce.”

Sheraton Records only distributed locally in the north-east, so nothing came of this development and Jack got tired of the duo. Being a developing ‘crazy,’ he went off to join an Hawaiian band in Washington. He then wound up back in Memphis in 1954. That year he answered an advert for trainee dance instructors and he became an employee of the Arthur Murray School of Dancing on Main Street. He also went to the University of Memphis to study English.

On evenings and weekends, he played shows with a western-swing influenced country band run by a pal of his, truck driver Slim Wallace. When they played the Eagles Nest in Memphis, a young Elvis Presley filled in during their break time. Wallace’s Dixie Ramblers played a regular spot at a club in Paragould, Arkansas, and while returning one night Jack and Slim plotted their entry into the record business. Slim put up most of the 450 dollars they needed to buy an old Magnacord tape deck from DJ ‘Sleepy Eyed John,’ and Jack built himself a studio in Slim’s garage. The garage was on Fernwood Drive, so the label was to be called Fernwood.

The first Fernwood disc does not exist. It was to be Trouble Bound  by Arkansas wild man Billy Riley. After working on the songs, Jack Clement needed somewhere to have his tapes mastered for transfer to disc. On the advice of Bill Fitzgerald at Music Sales Distributors, Jack went to Sun Records. Sam Phillips heard Clement’s tape of Riley singing Trouble Bound and offered both Jack and Billy Riley a job. Clement joined Sun on June 15, 1956. His only remaining interest in Fernwood was to use Sun’s facilities to make masters, and to add the echo to the number one hit Tragedy by Thomas Wayne. This had been recorded at Hi Records since the garage studio was still incomplete. “Sam Phillips always wondered how they got that echo,” says Jack with a grin, “but I figured it didn’t take but a few minutes so why should I tell him.”

On the question of whether Sam Phillips really controlled the development of the Sun Sound, whether he was ‘the man’ or just lucky, Jack Clement is in no doubt. “All of Sam’s early success was entirely Sam’s. Elvis, Carl, Cash. My work was with developing Cash’s sound, and with Bill Justis and Charlie Rich. I was into making things musical. Sam was not, but he understood one thing that I didn’t at that time. He understood ‘feel’ in music. I was interested in machines and the way recordings would be made better. Sam liked empty, hollow, tubby sounds, but he knew a thing or two I didn’t. He let me do what I liked, but he retained ultimate control of what was issued. The first time Sam gave me an artist to work with, it was Roy Orbison. I recorded ‘Rockhouse’ with Roy and it was good. But Roy was not into what the Sun studio was capable of back then.”

Jack spent many hours working with several artists that he particularly liked. He began to recall them with obvious pleasure. “Cash. Sam gave me Johnny Cash from ‘Home Of The Blues’ onwards. Sonny Burgess. He was a fine artist but he didn’t really fit into a groove, same with Conway Twitty who never made anything that sounded much like a record. Then Ernie Chaffin and Mack Self, these were excellent country singers.” In Jack Clement’s view, Sun was not making records quite ‘musical’ enough. He was responsible for getting Cash into the pop market and for trying a range of experiments with vocal backings and steel guitar sounds. What he did like at Sun was firstly the depth of talented artists, and secondly the relaxed atmosphere. He could do what he liked; work all night on a session, write songs in Taylor’s Cafe next door, like Cash’s Guess Things Happen That Way, or even build a bathroom in the control room. He once told Sam he could build an office for promotion girl Barbara Barnes for a hundred dollars. So he cancelled sessions and set to with the woodwork. He also spent time helping to master recordings for his buddies on rival labels, and on developing his own musical sound as a performer.

The Jack Clement sound was country, but it was not the Sun sound. It was acoustic, with ringing tones instead of the muddy Cash bass sounds. It was worked out with the help of Clement’s buddy, Jimmy C. Wilson, Jack says, “Wilson was nearly as crazy as me. He was a bit of a nut. He lived in rooms above Taylor’s and he was a great player if he was in the mood. He had a pet coon which he used to bring in and chain to the piano. He used to dismantle and re-build old guns up in his room and he set fire to the place one time. After that he loosed off a rocket, a home-made thing, up there and they threw him out. He went to California and married Nudie the tailor’s daughter.”

In February 1957, Clement and Wilson, plus coon, took off for the RCA Studios in Nashville. They hired bass player Bob Moore and recorded four songs. Ten Years was the major contender, a light, pleasant country ballad with an epic story song feel to it. It’s the Jack Clement style, and it was repeated in October when Jack recreated the sound at Sun on Black Haired Man. This was a fast, rhythmic development of the Cash beat, a gunfighter ballad of real class and a fairly successful record. The flip, Wrong, is light singalong country pop with a prominent acoustic guitar from Jack.

Leaving Sun early in 1959 with his part in a string of million-selling productions behind him, Jack used the proceeds of his song copyrights to buy equipment and to set up Summer Records on Main Street in Memphis. Apart from an atrocious novelty called Motorcycle Michael, Summer bombed. Clement kept busy, though, fooling around with productions for Pepper Records (Tommy Tucker’s Return Of A Teenage Queen) and for Echo Records, which he formed with Stan Kesler and Clyde Leoppard and for which he built a studio on Manassas Avenue. In the fall of ’59 Jack had blown all his money and, in his words, “decided I had to do some work.” He called Chet Atkins in Nashville and was hired as RCA’s most junior producer, producing Del Wood and cultivating stars like Jim Reeves who might record his songs.

After Clement’s first stint in Nashville, he went to Beaumont, Texas, to work with music publisher Bill Hall. While there, he pitched the #1 hit She Thinks I Still Care to George Jones, arranged Ring Of Fire for Johnny Cash, and produced the million-selling pop hit Patches for Dickey Lee, the man who dubbed him ‘Cowboy Jack’. He wrote a number of songs for Johnny Cash at this time including Everybody Loves A Nut and The One On The Right Is On The Left. In 1965, he returned to Nashville, becoming the city’s resident freak … a title he still proudly bears. His biggest coup was signing Charley Pride, but he also signed Townes Van Zandt, the Stonemans, and several other left-of-center country artists. Clement produced his first session with Charley Pride at his own expense and shopped it around town. It wasn’t easy:“The first session, word got around that some idiot was cutting a black country singer. The studio was packed with half the music business in Nashville, waiting to see if I would make a fool of myself.” Eventually Chet Atkins took a chance and put Snakes Crawl At Night on RCA and Pride and Clement on the way to becoming the biggest selling artist on RCA.

With Charley Pride money, he built a studio on Belmont Boulevard next to Shelby Singleton’s reconstituted Sun Records where he ran Jack Music Publishing and set up a record label JMI. In 1970 he recorded one of the biggest selling records of the year there, Ray Stevens’ Everything is Beautiful. A few years on, he signed Don Williams to his JMI label, but felt betrayed when Williams wriggled out of the deal to sign with ABC. Then he bought Pat Boone’s grandmother’s big old house in Nashville and put a studio in the roof. He called it, “a live studio, with no baffles or ear-phones, and no metronomical attitudes, and a control board in the same room as the artists.”  He put some of his money into movies and made a big loss on a horror classic, ‘Dear Dead Delilah’ but contributed a wonderful promo slogan – ‘You pay for the whole seat; you only use the edge’.

From the ’70s onward, Clement’s newly named Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa became Nashville’s ground zero for off-kilter country. He produced the album ‘Dreaming My Dreams’ considered by many to be Waylon Jennings’ finest work. In 1978, Jack made his own first album, ‘All I Want To Do In Life,’ leased to Elektra. You’d think that when a man takes 25 years over an album he’d have a good reason; “it took me a little while to get the rhythm right on the album,” he explained with a straight face. The LP was pure Jack Clement music, a rhythmic sound, drawing on the love songs, the acoustic country, the gunfighter ballads, the outlaw anthems and the old Sun sounds that took his time up those 25 years. It is a pleasantly different-sounding, cleverly tailored album. Most are stand-out tracks, but none more so than Gone Girl, later picked up by Johnny Cash, and the John Prine song, There She Goes. Prine became one of the many quirky protégés and associates Clement liked to hang around with down the years. And the people clamouring to stay at the legendary Recording Spa kept increasing. Then in 1988 the pop band U2 asked Jack to produce their album, ‘Rattle And Hum’. Clement had never heard of them but he did it anyway. Years later, in 2005, a cult documentary DVD, ‘Shakespeare Was A Big George Jones Fan,’ summarised Jack’s life and times and featured many of his famous friends as well as exclusive home movie footage from the Cowboy Arms archives.

In 2004 Jack came up with his own second album, ‘Guess Things Happen That Way,’ on Dualtone. It was a demonstration of the one-of-a-kind world of Cowboy Jack, a project he tinkered with until the last possible second, remixing a vocal here, adding a kazoo there, and juggling the entire sequence to ultimately tell a story the way only he can. The album features ‘Cowboy’s Ragtime Band’, a superb group of cronies, cohorts and ace players. The songs are another combination of Clement classics, new and old, and songs he loves by friends he’s known. Jack says. “I just think about what the song needs and how it ought to be done. Most every successful record I’ve ever produced was successful because it didn’t sound like anything else at the time. I like the record business because nobody remembers your flops. And you’ve only got to do something right once then you’ve captured it forever.”

That sort of permanence can be endangered though. In June 2011, a fire caused by faulty attic wiring destroyed some of the Cowboy Arms, and a lot of Jack’s most prized possessions, but it was rebuilt and Clement still holds court there every day, and will point out the Gibson Jumbo on the wall behind his desk, telling those who care that it’s the guitar he played on Cash’s hit Sun version of Big River. On the occasion of Sam Phillips’ death, in 2003, Jack Clement spoke movingly at the memorial service, barely able to staunch tears as he recalled some of their late night telephone conversations. Now, ten years on, in his 80s and no longer creating the waves he once did, Jack Clement can still look back at a remarkable career and know he’s made his mark. “I’ve got a bunch of people who say I’m a genius,” Jack once said. “That don’t make me a genius. But you’ve got to be pretty smart to get all them people to say that.”

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RED SIMPSON: ‘HELLO, I’M RED SIMPSON’

If you like underdog stories and 18-wheelers, make room in your life for this boxed set. In the Bakersfield hard-country scene of the 1960s Buck Owens was clearly the boss: bandleader, singer, songwriter, publisher, celebrity. But in the circle of creativity around him there was Red Simpson, a singer-songwriter who took his own talent much less seriously, and almost accidentally ended up as one of the four giants of truck-driving music. (The others were Dave Dudley, Red Sovine and Dick Curless, none of whom had Mr. Simpson’s diffident charm or heartbreaking ballad voice.) At the instigation of the producer Ken Nelson, he pumped out hauling-related LPs for Capitol through the 1960s and ’70s, including a genuinely tear-inducing Christmas album and a collection of tracks from the often misunderstood point of view of the highway patrolman. All that is here: 165 songs, 26 of them previously unissued, and a 108-page biography by Scott B. Bom

To listen to Ed’s comments, please, click here

At the age of eleven, Mickey Baker was put into orphanage. At the age of sixteen he escaped to New York, jobbed as a dishwasher and became a full-time pool shark. When he was 19 he decided to become a serious jazz musician. He bought a trumpet and enrolled at The New York School of Music, but he gave up shortly afterwards and took private lessons instead. In 1949 he led his first own combo – and was stranded in California where he experienced a show by blues guitarist Pee Wee Crayton. Pee Wee drove a big Cadillac, and he band was travelling in a huge bus. Obviously, Pee Wee did very well playing the blues. Consequently, young Mickey Baker practiced like crazy to learn the art of guitar playing.

After returning to New York City, he found session work for labels like Savoy, King and Atlantic. He did sessions with The Drifters, Ray Charles, Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Coleman Hawkins, and numerous other artists. During this time, Baker played on countless hit records.

In 1956 he formed the duo Mickey & Sylvia, inspired by the success of the popular duo Les Paul & Mary Ford. Sylvia Robinson was one of his guitar students. In 1956, they landed a huge hit with ‘Love Is Strange’. But only one year later, the duo broke up. Mickey & Sylvia continued to record sporadically into the mid-sixties. Finally, Mickey Baker moved to France on a permanent basis. In France he recorded a few solo albums, jazz and blues, and worked with French rock and pop performers. He will always be remembered for his definite self-tuition method book series, the Complete Course in Jazz Guitar, which remains a mainstay for introducing students of guitar to the world of jazz.

Mickey Baker died at the age of 87.