FEATURE: 'Cowboy' Clement Reunites with Cash on New Album

09/15/2004 2:52 AM, Reuters
Dean Goodman

Nashville impresario "Cowboy" Jack Clement has been responsible for some of the greatest moments in popular music.

As a producer at Sun Records in the 1950s, Clement worked with Roy Orbison , Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. He wrote two of Cash's biggest hits, and went on to discover Charley Pride, producing his first 20 albums. Beyond country, he recorded three tunes for U2's "Rattle and Hum" album. He is currently working with 86-year-old Eddy Arnold on a new release.

Clement, a youthful 73, released his own album in 1978, and has finally got around to putting out a follow-up, "Guess Things Happen That Way" (Dualtone Music), which went on sale Tuesday.

The title, of course, refers to the 1958 Clement-penned ballad that Cash took to No. 1 on the country charts. The album features a new version, with a vocal overdub that Cash recorded shortly before he died last September.

"I considered him one of my best friends," Clement, 73, said in a recent phone interview from his Nashville studio. "I loved the guy, I still do. I miss him every day."

At Cash's funeral, Clement read a two-page poem, "My Friend the Famous Person," which he had written about the "Man in Black" in 1991.

The new version of "Guess Things Happen That Way," a philosophical lament about a failed relationship, has more of a Latin feel, which is what Clement originally envisaged when he was writing the song with Dean Martin 's "Memories Are Made of This" as his role model.

CASH RARITIES

The other country chart-topper that Clement wrote for Cash, the 1957 novelty tune "Ballad of a Teenage Queen," is revisited on the album courtesy of a version that Cash recorded in 1981. Clement wrote that song after falling in love with Barbara Pitman, a recording artist at Sun, i.e. "the candy store" cited in the song.

Clement owns the master tapes for seven or eight songs that Cash recorded shortly after he was dropped from Columbia Records in 1986, and is considering licensing them to Rick Rubin, the producer who masterminded Cash's 1990s comeback.

The unreleased songs include a version of the Leon McAuliffe instrumental "Steel Guitar Rag" with words; "Goodbye Ugly," which Cash wrote about his cat; and an update of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," which Cash wrote to protest the government's treatment of farmers.

Clement's album also includes a collaboration with Georgia's maverick U.S. senator, Zell Miller, credited as a co-writer of "Every Place I've Ever Been." The two met and became instant friends shortly after the nominal Democrat began a two-term stint as governor of Georgia in 1991.

Miller, described by Clement as a walking encyclopedia of country music, wanted to be a songwriter. He came up with an autobiographical outline and the title, and pitched it to Clement. They spent a morning working on the tune together and finished up later by fax.

Clement also sings "It'll Be Me," which he wrote for Lewis in 1957, and a cover of the Rolling Stones' 1968 blues tune "No Expectations," whose version Clement claimed not to have heard until recently.

Clement never wanted to be a superstar like the acts that he propelled to the big time, but he is thinking of hitting the road to help promote the album.

Otherwise, he holds court at the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa, his subtly monikered home-office-recording studio. It's a popular hangout for country acts, and it saves him from venturing onto Music Row, where he risks running into label executives he thinks have ruined the business by releasing boring songs that all sound the same.

Like the character in his title track, Clement's not thrilled, but he guesses things happen that way.

"I just don't mess with them much and they don't mess with me ... Let them run themselves. They don't need my help."

Reuters/VNU