PASSINGS On August 8, 2013, the world lost a true musi-
cal innovator and icon. Cowboy Jack Clement passed after an ogoing battle with liver cancer, He was 82. Clement was a legendary figure in Nashville as
a producer, arranger, song- writer and per- former, and several years ago began hosting his own radio show on Sir- ius Outlaw Country. He was a great
friend of the late Johnny Cash, and wrote “I Guess Things Happen That Way” for Cash. He worked on many projects with Cash over the years, in- cluding production and arranging of the horns on “Ring of Fire. Clement worked with a virtual “who’s who” of the music industry, including U2 and he was the first person to ever record Jerry Lee Lewis. During a 2006 interview I had the pleasure of
conducting with Jack, he told me a lot of great stories, including the chance recording of the now legendary Million Dollar Quartet session. “Well, first of all Carl Perkins was cutting a
session, Sam was engineering it and I am sit- ting in the control room and Jerry Lee had been in town for a few weeks and then I was using him on session, and I had convinced Sam and Carl to hire Jerry Lee to play the piano and that is the reason Jerry Lee was there. He was hired to do piano. The thing we did that day that was memorable was "Match- box." Johnny Cash was there because Carl had invited him and they were good buddies. The session was about to end and Elvis walked in with a small entourage and of
course everything just sort of stopped. Sam went next door to Taylor’s Restaurant. They were talking and pretty soon started
jamming on some old gospel tunes, and the mikes were still out there so I turned on the volume because I was still in the control room. I was thinking that I would be remiss not to record some of this so I put on a tape and walked out into the studio and moved a couple of the mikes around
where the people were jamming and stuff and let it roll. Every time the tape would end I would put another one on. So I think that there was about a total of about one and a half hours of it recorded that day. Nobody thought much about those tapes and they just set there in the control room and now it has found it’s way onto a record... That was the only time I had ever pushed
the recording button in the studio with Elvis, but I had worked with him on some shows and night clubs. He always came by Sun be- cause it was a homing instinct. He always called Sam ‘Mr. Philips.’ He would drop by periodically, and that was when he came to town and he was there a good bit of the time. He liked to jam.”
-Michael Buffalo Smith
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