A poet, a Texas troubadour, the godfather of Nashville songwriters and a beloved talent, Guy Clark gave the world a treasure trove of emotionally charged songs and forever left his imprint on country music.
“It’s hard to imagine the world of music without Guy, the world of language without Guy.”
Clark died Tuesday morning at his home in Nashville after a long illness, which included battles with lymphoma and diabetes, his manager told the New York Times. He was 74.
A rugged, soulful musician, Clark, who put out 13 studio albums of his own, wrote songs about themes he found important — things like value, loyalty, and respect — songs that were recorded by all the greats in the business, including Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, George Strait, Bobby Bare, Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and others.
“It’s hard to imagine the world of music without Guy, the world of language without Guy,” Emmylou Harris told NPR in 2013. “He really embraces the human condition. There is no judgment in Guy’s songs … You know that everyone has been on a rough road.”
The country music world is remembering Clark, who entered the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004 and was known for working out of his basement, where he built guitars and wrote songs longhand on graph paper, according to The Tennessean.
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One of his classic songs, “That Old Time Feeling,” opens with a line that reflects his poetic use of words: “That old-time feeling goes sneaking down the hall, like an old grey cat in winter, keepin’ close to the wall.”
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Born in the dusty town of Monahans, Texas, Clark lived in his grandmother’s 13-room hotel before joining the Peace Corps in 1963. He studied for about a month at the University of Minnesota before opening a guitar repair shop in Houston in the mid-60s. It was around that time that he began performing in clubs and formed friendships with Townes Van Zandt and singer-songwriters including Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Newbury, and Kay (later known as K. T.) Oslin.
He kicked around San Francisco and Los Angeles before heading to Nashville in the early 1970s.
Johnny Cash was the first major Nashville star to record his songs. Walker recorded “L.A. Freeway” for a 1972 album, and “Desperados Waiting for the Train” the following year, but Clark spent many years working small clubs while cultivating an image The Tennessean described as “a local icon, an arbiter of taste and song sensibility, and a vodka-fueled sage.”
In more recent years, Vince Gill had a Top 10 country hit with Clark’s “Oklahoma Borderline” in 1985, and Kenny Chesney made Mr. Clark’s “Hemingway’s Whiskey” the title track of his 2010 album.
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Among Clark’s many wonderful songs are seven favorites shown here, including “Texas Cooking,” a fun kitschy song that showcases his love of the Lone Star State, and “Come From the Heart,” a tune about living life with abandon.
Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard, who first met Clark in the early 1970s, told the Guardian that two of Clark’s songs — “LA Freeway” and “Desperados” — “were like [Sam] Peckinpah movies, they were that powerful … The first time you would hear those songs, you couldn’t believe how well-crafted they were, but also so emotional.”
Clark’s theory of songwriting, he told NPR, was this: “No bulls*** means no bulls***, know what I mean?”
Guy’s wife Susanna Clark, an accomplished visual artist and songwriter, died in 2012. They had been married 40 years. He is survived by his son Travis and daughter-in-law Krista McMurtry Clark and sisters Caroline Clark Dugan and Jan Clark.
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