Guy Clark Beginner's Guide
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’ January, 2016 Beginner s Guide © Tamara Saviano to Guy Clark Guy Clark with producer Rodney Crowell and band working on the Better Days album in 1983. Living one word to the next, one line at a time, there is more to life than whiskey, There’s more To words than rhyme Guy Clark and Susanna Talley eased Guy often says that Nashville in the the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. into Nashville on a rainy November ’70s was like Paris in the ’20s. And if Kristofferson graced the cover of Look night in 1971. Guy had driven his that is the case, Guy and Susanna were Magazine’s country music special with rusted junker of a ’63 Volkswagon bus the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald of the headline: Kris Kristofferson, First from Houston to Los Angeles back to Nashville. The Clarks would come to Superstar of the New Country Music. Only a Houston and now to Tennessee. It was shape the folk and singer-songwriter year before, in the fall of 1970, a stoned loaded with everything they owned: a scene in Music City much like the Kristofferson stumbled on his way to the few clothes and dishes, a guitar, Fitzgeralds fashioned the jazz age. stage to accept the Country Music Susanna’s paintings, and all the tools By the time Guy and Susanna Association Song of the Year award for and parts needed to fix the damn thing arrived in Tennessee, Willie Nelson “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” if it broke down in the desert. had moved back to Austin and banded There was a new Music City brewing For once there was a little money in the hippies and rednecks together with underground. Outlaw songwriters were Guy’s wallet. He had just signed his his rowdy mix of country and rock n’ bubbling up into the mainstream and first publishing deal as a songwriter. roll. Kris Kristofferson’s star Guy was about to become a lion in this The beat up leather also held a scrap skyrocketed in Hollywood. Earlier that modern breed of Nashville Cat. from a burger sack with a partial lyric year Janis Joplin’s hit of Kristofferson’s that read: “If I could just get off of this “Me and Bobby McGee” and Sammi Smith’s version of “Help Me Make It L.A. Freeway without getting killed or caught.” Through The Night” were at the top of Pack up all your dishes/Make note of all good wishes Say goodbye to the landlord for me/That sumbitch has always bored me Throw out them L.A. papers/And that moldy box of vanilla wafers Adios to all this concrete/Gonna get me some dirt road back street If I could just get off of this L.A. freeway Without getting killed or caught I’d be down the road in a cloud of smoke to some land I ain’t bought. (Photo at right – Jack Prigg holds infant Guy Clark outside the Clark Hotel in Monahans, Texas, 1942) THE REAL DESPERADO When Guy’s dad, Ellis, joined the Army during WWII, Guy and his mother Frances lived at the Clark Hotel with Guy’s paternal grandmother, Rossie, and her wildcatter boyfriend, Jack Prigg. “Jack was a great painter of pictures and teller of stories; but, of course, you never know whether to believe him or not. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world to tell somebody a big one and they’d believe it,” Frances Clark said. Highway 80 cross the Texas “From the time I got Guy home from the hospital Jack would come in to see him sand, makes a little stop everyday. Here’s this little scrap lying in his crib looking around and Jack leaning called monahans over petting him, grabbing his toes. ‘Well, hello, little Jack.’ The first time Guy went Guy Charles Clark was born in Cloaked behind a pretty face, out with Jack, Ellis’s mother and I came Monahans, Texas on November 6, warm demeanor and a prosthetic leg, back to the hotel and Jack and Guy were 1941. Although bleak and Rossie Clark was a tough broad. By gone. She was about to have a fit. When monochromatic, there is still the time she was 30 years old in 1926, they finally came back, she was just raising something irresistible about she had endured a brutal childhood leg hell with Jack. ‘Where have you been with Monahans. It still feels like the old amputation on the family’s kitchen the baby?’ Jack said, ‘Well, I wanted him West here, and one can easily table, demoralizing poverty during the to see the drilling rig.’ What he wanted to recognize how the town and its great depression, and a taxing life as a do was to take Guy out there and show characters, including Guy’s own single mother in the hot West Texas him off to the crew. Jack Prigg was the family, so profoundly influenced the dust bowl. nearest thing to a grandfather my children narratives of songs including During prohibition, Rossie hid her ever had. Jack took it upon himself to take “Desperados Waiting For A Train,” illicit whiskey outside the back of Guy for haircuts and all that kind of stuff. “New Cut Road,” Texas 1947,” “Rita Clark’s Lunch in a rusty water meter He took him to the barbershop and the Ballou,” “Lone Star Hotel,” and box buried in the sand. Legend has it cowboy movies and the wading pool.” “Crystelle.” that the hard-nosed local sheriff, Irby “Texas has always had that distinct Dyer, had a soft spot for Rossie. Dyer I'd play the Red River Valley valor,” Guy says. “You know, it’s had a dependable reputation for And he’d sit in the kitchen and cry where Davy Crockett and Sam busting bootleggers and bank robbers Run his fingers through seventy Houston went from Tennessee. but most of the time he kept his years of livin’ People from all over the south deputies away from Rossie and turned And wonder, “Lord, has every well hammered signs on their doors that a blind eye to her undercover liquor I’ve drilled run dry? said G.T.T., Gone to Texas. business. We were friends Whenever someone would go bust or Although, there was that time Me and this old man had enough of where they were living, Rossie served pitchers of gin and Like Desperados waiting for a train they’d put a sign on the door and head whiskey at a local dance. Dyer and his Like Desperados waiting for a train to Texas. Romantic notions about deputies raided the party. As Rossie He’s a drifter and a driller of oil Texas have been going on since was pouring the liquor down the sink wells Coronado and the seven cities of gold. with running water, Dyer attempted An old school man of the world It’s hardscrabble land but it has that to put the plug in the sink to keep the He let me drive his car independent spirit about it. In first evidence while Rossie fought him off. When he’s too drunk to grade, all school kids in Texas get a They both ended up drenched in And he’d wink and give me money comic book that’s covered like a Texas whiskey and water. In the end, there for the girls flag with drawings and cartoons of the was no proof for the beleaguered history of Texas and you’d carry that sheriff. *** book with you everywhere.” THE SOUTH COAST OF TEXAS is a thin slice of life It’s easy to see why Ellis Clark When Sputnik orbited the earth on picked Rockport as the place to raise October 4, 1957, Guy and his his young family after he finished law classmates watched from a pep rally in school. The sleepy fishing village on downtown Rockport. Right after his the south coast of Texas is a far cry 16th birthday, Guy joined the Fulton from the heat and dust of West Volunteer Fire Department. All the Texas. The first time Ellis came to Clark kids participated in the Rockport, he spotted a dog lying on a Christmas pageant at church. road that split around a windswept Guy blossomed into a leader, was oak tree. He said to his family: “A popular with his classmates, and town where they build roads around strived to be the best in all that he the trees and a dog can safely lie on pursued. As captain and center, Guy the street is the place I want to live.” led the football team. He played guard The Clark family settled into the in basketball, ran the 100-yard dash routine of small town life on the and threw discus in track and field. He Texas coast.The post-WWII 1950s presided over the junior class as was a time of American prosperity president, acted in school plays, and BOATS TO BUILD and “Leave It To Beaver” took piano lessons from Tilly Fry. Guy wholesomeness. Guy was a clean-cut, illustrated section pages for the Working in Rob Roy Rice’s shipyard all American boy from a solid, yearbook with quoted passages from left an indelible print on Guy’s life as a middle-class family. Ellis and Frances poems by Henry Wadsworth songwriter and guitar builder. During Clark ascended to positions of Longfellow, George Wither and Walt World War II, the shipyard built mine influence in the community. Whitman. sweepers and big wooden PT boats.