Cowboy Jack Clement

"Cowboy" Jack Clement is a guitar player, singer, songwriter, engineer, publisher and producer, born in 1931 in Tennessee. He began working in Memphis at Sun Records in 1956, engineering and producing sessions for Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis. After falling out with Sam Phillips, he moved to Nashville and began working with Chet Atkins before moving to Beaumont, Texas, where he scored more hit songs. Eventually he returned to Nashville, where he remains today. He's the quintessential behind-the- scenes guy, the man who gets things done. His laid back style and soothing drawl belie the qualities that made him a success — energy, focus, keen intuition and a love of risk. A short list of other production credits includes Billy Lee Riley, Charley Pride, Townes Van Zandt, U2, Don Williams, Louis Armstrong, Frankie Yankovic and Waylon Jennings. At 79 Clement is still active, hosting a show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio and playing select dates with his band. He recently produced the album Ghost Town by the talented quintet, Marley's Ghost, where Cowboy even sings lead on a version of his tune, "Going Back To Bowling Green." Be sure to look for the documentary about Jack, Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan, by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville.

What got you started playing music?

I always liked to hear it on the radio. I listened to the Grand Ole Opry. I started playin' when I was 13. My father borrowed me a guitar from somebody. A couple of years later I got fairly good and [started] thinkin', "I want to make a career out of this." When I got to be about 14, I decided I was goin' to crash the Grand Ole Opry when I was 16. I lived in kind of a remote area and I didn't have many people to play with, but I talked to two or three kids around me who knew how to play guitar and a little mandolin and stuff so I'd have a band. I always had an impulse to get up a band — I still do. My latest band is the best band I've ever had.

How did you end up at Sun Studios?

I went to college two or three years at Memphis State. I never intended to graduate. I was takin' a sort of curriculum I thought would be good for somebody who wanted to be a writer — just a little bit of everything. In 1956 I had produced a record with a guy named Billy Lee Riley in a radio station, and I took it to Sam Phillips to have him master it ["Trouble Bound" and "Rock With Me Baby"]. He was still doin' that in those days — actually had lathes in the control room. One was for microgroove and one was for 78s. He liked it and wanted to put it out on Sun Records. He said, "That's the first rock 'n' roll anybody brought me around here." By then everybody was bringin' stuff to him. In Memphis, in the early stages, Sam Phillips was almost as famous as Elvis. He offered me a job, and two weeks later (June 15, 1956) I went to work there. I was in hog heaven 'cause by that time I'd got interested in recording and producing. Sam was the only engineer when I went there. He did all that stuff — runnin' the board and producin.' He did all of Elvis' stuff and early Johnny Cash stuff right up to "I Walk The Line" and beyond, but he was gettin' tired of all that. So I came along. I really liked that producin' thing. In fact I had built a little studio in a friend of mine's garage [Slim Wallace]. We started a record label called Fernwood, and we were gonna put out that first record. But Sam Phillips put it out instead and paid us a penny a record. [Slim] went on with Fernwood and had a big hit with Thomas Wayne called "Tragedy." We had built this little studio, and we had this Magnecorder tape recorder. It didn't have any echo. That's the first thing I wanted Sam to show me, is how you do that echo. I went to work there and I was havin' a ball. I brought Billy Lee Riley in and started cuttin' some more stuff with him. There was a guitar player named Roland Janes. Then this great drummer named J.M. Van Eaton came along. He wasn't but about 17, still in high school, but we started usin' him on everything. He's the guy that played on all that Jerry Lee Lewis stuff — the big ones at Sun. We'd have to wait 'til he got out of school, send somebody out to pick him up and he'd go down and play with Jerry Lee Lewis or Johnny Cash. He'd kinda rush a little bit, but it was okay back in those days. People that learned to play from those records do that too. There's nothin' wrong with rushin' a little bit. Back where I come from, if the drummer's keepin' perfect time, he's draggin.'

What did you do after Sun Records?

I left Sun around February of '59, and I didn't come immediately to Nashville. I'd been over here and worked in the RCA Studios and met Chet Atkins. He wanted me to go to work for RCA, but they wanted me to move to New York. I was pretty happy at Sun at that time. I did let 'em pay my way to New York just so I could go talk about it and get a free trip. I had no intention of leaving because I was havin' a ball at Sun. After I left Sun I tried to start a record label, and that didn't get me nowhere. I messed around for about a year and I was runnin' out of money. I called Chet and asked him if he still wanted me to come work for him in Nashville, and he did. I did that with him for about a year and a half. He'd give me all the artists to work with that he didn't want to fool with. I wasn't happy with that, so I moved to Beaumont, Texas. I had some friends down there and we built a studio. Within six or eight months we had a million-seller called "Patches" by Dickey Lee. It had about nine splices in it I think. All I had was mono back then — an Ampex 351. I used to do a lot with a scissors 'cause I had a vocal group that had never been on a record before, and they did some clunkers. I just had to cut around it. It sounded like there were two or three fiddles on it, but it was only one — I had built a little echo chamber down there and everything.

Did Dickey write that?

No, it was somebody I didn't know — somebody in New York [Barry Mann and Larry Kobler]. The song had come to Chet Atkins, and he turned it over to me 'cause I was producin' Allen Reynolds for RCA at that time. Allen Reynolds didn't like it, but Dickey loved it. A year later we cut it in Beaumont after I'd done moved there and built a studio. I moved Allen and Dickey to Beaumont. They left back for Memphis about a year before I did. I stayed there for a year and mostly wrote songs. I moved here [Nashville], and about a year later I moved them here from Memphis. I used to relocate people pretty often.

Did you record any other hits in Beaumont?

What happened is we cut "Patches," and it was a big hit. We needed to have an album. Well, tryin' to cut a whole album in Beaumont with that vocal group and what I had to work with there would have been a nightmare. It would have been a struggle you know — havin' to splice my way through all of that. We wound up cuttin' most of Dickey's stuff in Nashville, and we cut some more stuff in Muscle Shoals. We did a few things in Beaumont. We did some Cajun hits and some stuff with Rod Bernard. We had one thing called "Colinda" [a rock 'n roll take on the Cajun tune, "Allons Danser Colinda"]. He sung it in French. I actually wrote a song called "Fais Do Do," and we had the girl across at Rich's Snack Bar translate it into French. We had Rod Bernard sing it in Cajun French. It was about this girl who does the twist at the Fais do-do. Years later they printed the lyrics to that in National Geographic magazine thinkin' it was an old Cajun folk song.

How'd you start working with Charley Pride?

When I was livin' in Beaumont I would come up and pitch songs to Chet and other people. Sometimes we'd come up and stay a week or two at a time. I might bring Allen and Dickey with me. One of the times I came up I met this guy, Jack Johnson. After I moved here we got to hangin' around a lot, and he'd been tellin' me about this black country singer named Charley Pride. One night we were over at this place on Music Row called The Professional Club. I'd had a few cocktails, and he talked me into goin' across the street to Cedarwood [Publishing] where he had an office — he was their PR guy. Jack played me a Charley Pride tape. He'd had it for probably a year and a half or somethin' and nobody'd go for it. So I listened to it and I could tell the guy was really legit. It wasn't like he was affecting any kind of thing — he was natural. So we went back to The Professional Club and had a few more cocktails and I said, "Get him in. I'll pay for it. We'll cut some sessions." A few weeks later Charley Pride shows up, and I gave him four or five songs to pick from. He lived in Montana, but he was gonna drive from here down to Sledge, Mississippi, visit his father for a few days and listen to the songs and learn some of them. While he was gone I set up a session at RCA. I remember we had [Hargus] "Pig" Robbins on piano, Kenneth Buttrey on drums, I think Roy Huskey on bass and a couple other pickers. We did two sides. I had told Chet Atkins that I'd let him have first crack at it. He liked it, but a couple of weeks later he said they had to turn it down — they didn't know what to do with it. So I set about to get it on somebody's label. I played it for Shelby Singleton, who was runnin' Mercury [Records] at that time, but he went and played it for R&B disc jockeys, and it was totally alien to them. I was right on the verge of pressin' it up myself, and then I ran into Chet Atkins. He asked me what I had ever done with Charley Pride. Well, I said I hadn't done anything yet, but I'm thinkin' about pressin' it up myself. He said, "I've been thinkin' about that, and we might be passin' up another Elvis Presley." Then he said if I got him another copy of it, he'd take it to this big A&R meeting the next week in L.A. and play it for them. I got him the disc and he came back a week or so later and said they went for it. So then he was on RCA with "Snakes Crawl At Night" and "Atlantic Costal Line." "Snakes Crawl At Night" is still one of my favorite records by him. It had a lot of bang to it. I used to have these big speakers up in the office — [Altec Lansing] "Voice of the Theatre" speakers. I could blow 'em out of there, make that glass be vibratin'.

What do you look for in an artist you might consider producing?

First of all, if I'm gonna produce somebody I like to feel we're not gonna argue forever. We sort of see things similarly. The person needs to trust me and I need to trust them — just feel like we're in accord as far as musical taste, pickin' songs and stuff. You gotta remember singers are not the smartest people in the world. [chuckles] They're all ego freaks. They're all a pain in the butt, really — most of 'em. [chuckles] So I like to find the ones who ain't too big a pain, someone at least to have fun with. Like Tompall Glaser — we argued a lot, but we had a lot of fun. Me and Charley Pride argued a lot, but mostly about material and stuff. But I still like the guy, even though we used to argue all the time.

What do you think about today's country music?

Very little of it is what I call country. It's just a bunch of repetition to me and it has no relationship to any kind of feelings of mountains, fields or trees. It's just all about silly little themes. I don't care much for the music of today. I haven't liked what I've heard on the radio for a long time. It's all monopolies — there's no freedom in it. It's all designed to get people to repeat themselves and be inane. You know, it's not always the artists' fault, it's their producers' fault. I said years ago we ought to get producers out of the link. You never saw Gene Autry or Roy Rogers with a producer. Gene would say, "Hey Bob Nolan, round up the boys and let's pick and sing a number." [There] wasn't some guy tellin' 'em the tempo's wrong or so-and-so take the intro. They'd work all that up themselves. Producers and engineers got to be too big a part of the thing, have too much to say about it and too much to do with the musical flow. That's not always wrong, but for certain things you don't need committees. There ought to be a guy who knows how to run a band, knows a good song when he hears it, knows not to eat the microphone or get too far away — professional things.

They used to cut live in Nashville. When did things change?

When I used to do Charley Pride, we'd have the vocal group and everything right in there. That was before 8, 16- and 24-track came along. Back then we were either 3- or 4-track. But I started with 1-track at Sun Records. We overdubbed though. We would add vocal groups and stuff. This is where we'd go mono-to-mono and mixing it and adding echo as you go.

Do you have any untold stories?

The whole Sun thing was a story. It was like a situation comedy. There's this little studio here and a restaurant next door. There was one outer office at Sun, then there's the studio, then there's a control room that had the bathroom — the only bathroom. So the girls up front, if they wanted to go to the bathroom we'd have to hold up recording as they came through to use it, or they could go next door to Taylor's Restaurant. Sam didn't have an office. There was a warehouse kind of thing out back full of returned records. I finally built a little room back there. I figured Sam would use it, but then he hired this girl to do publicity and she wound up using it. But with Sam all the business either took place in the control room or next door at Taylor's Restaurant, which was great. All the studios I've had since then have been at least close to food, had a kitchen or else were close to a restaurant. In Beaumont we had a great restaurant right across the street from the studio — Rich's Snack Bar. It was home cookin', and every Friday they'd have Cajun shrimp gumbo — the real thing. We were on Pearl Street, which was the main drag. Across from where we were was a city auditorium. Right next door to us was a hotel that had a restaurant and a bar — we used to perform over there all the time. That's how I got Allen Reynolds to move there — we got him a job tendin' bar for four hours and then singin' for two or three hours at night.

It sounds like fun.

Oh yeah. The Sun thing was probably the most fun I ever had in a three-year period. It was a lot of work, but it was fun. I didn't care how late we stayed or anything. It was a lot of fun.

J.M. Van Eaton Sun Records' Session Drummer by Gerald Jensen

When did you meet "Cowboy" Jack Clement?

I met Jack when I was still in high school. I went in there with a little high school band and cut an acetate dub, kinda like Elvis did. Coincidentally, Jack was in there with Billy Lee Riley and Roland Janes. They were looking for a drummer. Timing was everything. They heard us play, and I got a job playing with Riley from that. I played on everything Riley cut at Sun except "Trouble Bound." The first record I played on that was released was Jerry Lee Lewis' "Crazy Arms." Jack was the engineer. I played on all of Jerry Lee Lewis' records but one — "You Win Again." I was on hundreds of records that they cut down there. Once Sam heard me, he started calling me on some Roy Orbison sessions.

So you played on most of the sessions?

Nobody played on Cash's stuff at Sun but me. Russ Smith (as far as I know) may have played on Sonny Burgess' first record, but he actually went on the road with Jerry Lee and he never recorded there. There was another drummer named Johnny Bernero who was there when I came on the scene, and he did play on Warren Smith's [tracks]. I recorded with Warren Smith also, but I didn't play on songs like "Rock and Roll Ruby" and "Ubangi Stomp." There was a guy named Jimmy Lott who played on some Warren Smith stuff. W.S. Holland came in with Carl Perkins and went on the road with Johnny Cash.

Do you remember the "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and "Guess Things Happen That Way" sessions with Johnny Cash?

I know Jack wrote those songs, and obviously we would spend more time on the songs he wrote. I can't remember which one we cut first, but it was the first time that they were gonna put some drums on a Johnny Cash record. It was kinda unique and unusual because he had been real successful with just the three of them, and I don't think he wanted much more than that [Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on upright bass]. Once he heard it, he liked it and he offered me a job, but I was a rock 'n' roll drummer, and I didn't much think I would wanna play with just brushes and stuff. I stayed with Jerry and Riley — they were more my style of playin'. That's probably another mistake I made by not takin' that job. The only song I cut with Cash where you could hear a heavy drum beat is a song called "Straight A's in Love." If you pull that record out, you can actually hear a backbeat. That's one of the things Jack did for me and probably unbeknownst, because with Jerry Lee it was just me and him on "Crazy Arms." There weren't any other instruments but drums and piano. The drums were kinda brought to the forefront and almost became a lead instrument. Sometimes I listen to it and it seems too much. But it was good for me because it brought the drums up front instead of having them in the background.

Did the drum set belong to the studio or did you use your own set?

I had a set of Gretsch drums. You just needed a snare, a bass drum, a hi-hat and a cymbal — that's about all we ever brought in there. They didn't have enough microphones to separately mic anything anyway. Very few songs have a tom tom — maybe one or two songs, but I'd just flip the switch on the snare drum to get that sound. They didn't have but five or six microphones for everybody. Now they have that many on one set of drums. Recording's not as fun as it used to be. When I go over to Sun, I like to setup in the room instead of gettin' in the booths and all that. I like when you can get the feel off of each other like that.

Did you hang out with Jack?

I hung with Jack quite a bit back then. He had an apartment over there and we would go swimmin' and do crazy things. He was always thinkin' about music. He was constantly playin' his guitar and comin' up with somethin'. I was too young to realize writin' songs would be the ticket in the long run. We all had a chance to put our two cents in on the material, but only a couple of guys like Jack and Charlie Rich spent more time being creative and trying to write songs. Jerry Lee was not a writer — he didn't have material. So that would have been the perfect fit, to try to write him some stuff. Jack wrote "It'll Be Me" for Jerry Lee. That was one we spent forever recording, and that was on the backside of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On." He made some money off of that.

I understand "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" was done in one take.

I'd been on the road with Jerry. We'd played "Whole Lotta Shakin'" over at this club about a week before and the people went crazy. I'd never heard it before in my life until we played it that night. When we got in the studio somebody mentioned, "Hey man, why don't we do that song that them people liked so well the other night?" When Jerry kicked it off and I came in — "The rest is history," so they say.

Cowboy Jack's Rules For Band Members

1. Be alert.

2. Be on time.

3. Don't bring or invite anyone.

4. Don't talk about your troubles.

5. Don't mention the words "earphones," "headphones," "cans," "earmuffs" or the like.

6. Be quiet when the Cowboy is speaking.

7. Don't be timid or shy with your playing.

8. Have a good day.

9. Listen.

10. Remember that it only takes three minutes to cut a hit record.