Cowboy Jack Clement – Singers are a pain in the ass if you want to know the truth about it. Most of ’em. Well, all of ’em: A conversation with Cowboy Jack Clement

ND: You sometimes set yourself up almost as a foil to the artist.

JC: You got to remember, most singers are insecure. We all know that, right? And a lot of ’em are not too bright. Singers are a pain in the ass if you want to know the truth about it. Most of ’em. Well, all of ’em. I mean, I had my ideas about things, songs and phrasing and so on, and I was right a lot of the time. When I first started working with Charley, I had [a lot] to say about what was going to be the songs. ‘Course we’d argue, but I could win out. And after we’d had about three big ones in a row, he said “Why do you have to always be right?” And he was serious.

ND: When the Pride stuff started hitting, were you thinking it was empire-building time? Did you want to parlay that into something huge?

JC: I was always spending more money than I took in. So, sure, I was always empire-building. I just wanted to build studios and make movies and start record labels. You know, little stuff.

ND: By that time you were almost a polarizing figure in Nashville. People either believed fully in you or thought you were a fraud or a crazy guy.

JC: I was always aware that certain people thought I was loony. Not loony, but…yeah, wild and woolly, and not too respectful of the powers that be.

IV. THE THEME SONG WAS “MICKEY MOUSE”

ND: You were quoted when your first record came out as saying it was going to be the next big thing, that it was going to revolutionize country music. Did you really believe that?

JC: I don’t know if I believed it after I finished the record. I believed it along the way to that, though.

ND: What happened?

JC: First of all, it took me too long: It took two and a half years to do it. I was going around saying, “Someone can cut a hit record in three minutes, therefore I can cut a hit album in 30.” Then it took me more than two years.

ND: What took so long?

JC: I was really wanting to do it live to start with. So I formed a band: Cowboy’s Ragtime Band. I had a good budget for back then, so I hired the band to come here every day for a couple of months and rehearse in the living room. I hired one of the few rock ‘n’ roll bands in town, Peace And Quiet. I jammed with ’em one day at Jack’s Tracks and I liked them. Next thing, I hired Jim Rooney to play upside-down, left-handed guitar. Then we decided we needed a horn or two. So pretty soon I had a seven-or-eight-piece band with the three horns, and we’d do “Alabama Jubilee”, “Clarinet Polka”, “Beer Barrel Polka”, “Steel Guitar Rag” and “I Saw The Light”. After doing this for a month in the living room, we started learning other stuff.

We started playing at George Jones’ Possum Holler on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and we were really kicking. It was like a circus, really. It was a really neat show. The theme song was “Mickey Mouse”. I’d make my entrance to that one: “Who’s the leader of the club” and all that. We did that once a week for several months, and then it snowed and we suspended it for a week, and the next week it snowed. Kept snowing. A month later, it had drifted. We were never able to get it back together. One of the horn players moved to Alabama to sell carpets or something.

ND: So the group got messed up and that’s what took so long?

JC: That wasn’t all of it. I went in the studio one day and we managed to cut three keeper tracks. Well, it was about a year before we cut any more. I went through this whole thing of looking for a bass player. That’s when little Rachel Peer showed up, who married John Prine later. I hired her to come around here every morning and kind of get me going. I was sort of lagging at that point.

Rachel really is the one that sparked me to finally finish the record, ’cause I couldn’t get started. I was in the doldrums, and it’d been months since I’d cut a keeper track. But then she came along, and she was sweet and she was cute and I liked her bass playing and I liked her singing and her attitude. She showed up every day at 9 o’clock. We’d talk awhile, smoke a joint and pick awhile, and then she’d go home. That’s when the record started coming together.

ND: Were you disappointed when it came out and didn’t sell a ton?

JC: Naw, I don’t remember it being any huge letdown. It took a few months before you realized you ain’t gonna outdo Elvis or something, and by that time I was off into something else.

V. WHAT WOULD THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE WORLD DO IN A CASE LIKE THIS?

ND: By the 1980s, you’d gone from being a top-line producer to being a mentoring, one-step-removed figure. Were you happy in this new role as an “influence?”

JC: I thought it was cute (laughs). I don’t remember the ’80s very much. I remember I kind of didn’t like a lot of the music happening in the ’80s, and in the ’90s especially. I just went my way here and people’d come in and record. I kept the studio working and furnished some engineers. I sort of holed up in this house and let the rest of the world either go by or drop in.