West Texas Dust and a Shotgun Hotel
Guy Charles Clark was born on November 6, 1941, in Monahans, Texas — a dusty oil patch town in far West Texas. His family lived in his grandmother Rossie Clark’s 13-room shotgun hotel, a place that housed bomber pilots, drifters, oilmen, and a wildcatter named Jack Prigg. That world went straight into one of his most famous songs, “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” a portrait of a roughneck old man teaching a boy about life one card game at a time.
When Guy’s father returned from World War II and finished law school, the family moved to Rockport on the Texas Gulf Coast. Guy came of age in that pretty little beach town — played center on the football team, got his first guitar in 1958, and learned his first songs in Spanish from his father’s law partner.
Houston, the Peace Corps, and a Guitar Repair Shop
After a couple of false starts at college, Clark joined the Peace Corps in 1963 and trained in Puerto Rico. He turned down an assignment in India and landed in Houston instead, where he opened a guitar repair shop and started playing folk music at coffee shops and the Jester Lounge. It was in Houston’s folk scene of the late 1960s that Clark fell in with the group of songwriters who would reshape American music: Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Newbury, and Kay Oslin. Those Houston nights were the crucible for everything that came after.
Nashville and the Chapel Avenue Kitchen Table
In 1971, Clark and his wife Susanna moved to Nashville, crashing on Mickey Newbury’s houseboat before settling into a small rental house on Chapel Avenue in East Nashville. That house became the center of gravity for a generation of songwriters. Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Rosanne Cash, and Townes Van Zandt all gathered around the Clarks’ kitchen table for legendary guitar-pull sessions where everybody played their newest songs and, as the story goes, facetiously threatened to kill whoever had written the best one.
In that first year on Chapel Avenue, Clark wrote “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “L.A. Freeway,” and “That Old Time Feeling.” Jerry Jeff Walker recorded “L.A. Freeway” in 1972 and it became an FM radio hit. By the time Clark released his debut album Old No. 1 on RCA Records in 1975, he had already written a handful of songs that would become part of the American songbook.
Songs That Outlast the Singer
Guy Clark never had a number one hit under his own name. He didn’t need one. His songs traveled the world in other people’s voices. Ricky Skaggs took “Heartbroke” to number one in 1982. Steve Wariner hit number one with “Baby I’m Yours.” The Highwaymen — Cash, Nelson, Kristofferson, and Jennings — recorded “Desperados Waiting for a Train.” George Strait, Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Kenny Chesney, Jimmy Buffett, and Lyle Lovett all recorded Clark songs. The list is staggering not for its length but for its quality — these weren’t favors. Every one of those artists chose his songs because the writing was that good.
His own recordings were just as remarkable. “Randall Knife” is one of the most devastating songs about a father’s death ever written. “Homegrown Tomatoes” is pure joy. “Stuff That Works” opens with a line that says everything about the man: “I got an old blue shirt and it suits me just fine / I like the way it feels so I wear it all the time.” “Boats to Build” and “Texas 1947” are as close to perfect as a song gets.
More Than a Songwriter
Clark was also a master luthier who built guitars by hand in his Nashville basement — the same room where he wrote songs. He said the two crafts fed each other: one was right brain, the other left, and they kept him balanced. He was a visual artist too, though the guitars and the songs always came first.
The honors came late but heavy. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004. The Americana Music Association gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting in 2005. The Academy of Country Music handed him its Poet’s Award in 2013. And in 2014, his final studio album My Favorite Picture of You — a raw, aching record written largely about Susanna, who had died from lung cancer complications in 2012 — won the Grammy for Best Folk Album.
Ten Years Gone
Guy Clark died at home in Nashville on May 17, 2016. His touring partner of nearly 30 years, Verlon Thompson, was at his side. He was 74. John Prine said it best: “As great a writer as he was — if he had never written a word — he would still have been Guy Clark and I would have wanted to be friends with him.”
Texas gave Guy Clark to the world. The world gave his songs back to everyone. Ten years later, not a single one of them has aged a day. 🎶
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