Jack Clement

Well, today, back in 2013...

Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bear, and the late Cowboy Jack Clement.

Now, that guy is from years ago.

They were all officially inducted into the Country Hall of Fame, Country Music Hall of Fame.

He came to it as a radio man.

In the 1940s, he worked as a disc jockey and engineer at a station in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

a station with an open format that put white and black musicians on the same air.

And that idea stayed with him.

In 1945, he moved to a station in Memphis where he worked as an announcer and a sound engineer.

So notice what kind of pioneer this is.

Not a player and not a builder.

In another, it fell out of the trunk while the band was dealing with a flat tire.

I'll look around the room as soon as that happens and then cut off.

I look into the control room, and I was like, what the heck was that sound? Somebody in there came over the intercom, and they're like, huh? I don't know, maybe it was old Jack Clement back there knocking around in the room.

He probably liked it.

You know, because of the ghost of Jack Clement.

We were all laughing.

And then I got that feeling again, that weird feeling of like, nah, dude, it's fucking

He served for four years, and once he was out, he headed towards Memphis, Tennessee, a hotbed of musical cross-pollination.

He joined a band that included Slim Wallace and Jack Clement, who at the time were putting together Fernwood Studios.

Riley cut his first tracks at Fernwood.

Riley's next break came when Jack Clement brought those tracks to Memphis Recording Service, home to Sun Records and the legendary Sam Phillips.

When Phillips heard the tapes, he knew there was something there, and he did two things.

He bought the rights to the recordings, and he offered Jack Clement a job as a producer and engineer.

Sun would release Riley's first single, a song called Rock With Me Baby.

Well, a lot to do with my Rock with me baby, yeah, rock with me

He served for four years, and once he was out, he headed towards Memphis, Tennessee, a hotbed of musical cross-pollination.

He joined a band that included Slim Wallace and Jack Clement, who at the time were putting together Fernwood Studios.

Riley cut his first tracks at Fernwood.

Riley's next break came when Jack Clement brought those tracks to Memphis Recording Service, home to Sun Records and the legendary Sam Phillips.

When Phillips heard the tapes, he knew there was something there, and he did two things.

He bought the rights to the recordings, and he offered Jack Clement a job as a producer and engineer.

Sun would release Riley's first single, a song called Rock With Me Baby.

Yeah.

Trust me, it's not easy.

[laughs] Before that, we heard The Beach Boys with Wake the World, and Jack Clement came before The Beach Boys with a great version of Roving Gambler.

And we started that set off with ? and the Mysterians with Can't Get Enough of Your Baby.

Queued up and ready to go, we have an interesting, bombastic version of a Bob Dylan tune.

In November 1956, Lewis traveled to Memphis to audition for Sun Records.

Label owner Sam Phillips was in Florida, but producer and engineer Jack Clement recorded Lewis's rendition of Ray Price's Crazy Arms and his own composition, End of the Road.

In December of 1956, Lewis began recording prolifically as a solo artist and as a session musician for other soon artists, including Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.

His distinctive piano playing can be heard on many tracks recorded at Sun in late 1956 and early 1957, including Carl Perkins' Matchbox, Your True Love, and Put Your Cat Clothes On, and Billy Lee Riley's Flying Saucers Rock and Roll.

Yeah.

"It's already happened." And yet it turns out I was really brought into it in the right time, 'cause I've gotten to, you know, mix it up with all, a lotta people who aren't on the Earth anymore, you know? And, and like, for example, going to see Jack Clement, who was the guy that was, who was, like, saying into the mic, you know, "Have you got anything, a- anything a little bit, uh, coax a little bit more?"

Yeah.

And that's when Jerry Lee Lewis was like, "Well, I could play this," [laughs] and then starts playing "Great Balls of Fire."