b. Jack Henderson Clement, 5 April 1931, Whitehaven, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Clement, the son of a dentist and choirmaster, began playing music professionally while in the US Marines. He moved to Washington DC in 1952 and worked with the Stoneman Family and Roy Clark, before forming a novelty country music act, Buzz And Jack, with Buzz Busby. He worked as an Arthur Murray dance instructor in Memphis in 1954 and then formed the garage-based Fernwood Records with truck-driver Slim Wallace. They leased their first recording, "Trouble Bound' by Billy Lee Riley, to Sam Phillips at Sun Records. As a result, Phillips employed Clement as a songwriter, session musician, engineer and producer. Clement produced Jerry Lee Lewis" "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On", as well as writing "It'll Be Me" and "Fools Like Me". He also helped Johnny Cash develop his distinctive sound and wrote his US pop hits "Guess Things Happen That Way" and "Ballad Of A Teenage Queen". Clement played rhythm guitar on Cash's classic recording of "Big River", as well as working with Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich and Conway Twitty.
In 1959 Clement left Sun and formed the unsuccessful Summer Records ("Summer hits, Summer not, Hope you like the ones we've got."). Clement then worked as an assistant to Chet Atkins at RCA Records, producing Del Wood and writing Jim Reeves' "I Know One" and Bobby Bare's "Miller's Cave". On a whim, he decided that he wanted to make Beaumont, Texas, the music capital of the world, but the only hit he produced there was Dickey Lee's 1962 US Top 10 hit, "Patches". Back in Nashville, Clement produced Johnny Cash's 1963 hit "Ring Of Fire", and wrote several comic songs for Everybody Loves A Nut, including "The One On The Right Is On The Left". Just as Sam Phillips had been looking for "a white boy who could sound black", Clement wanted a black country star. In 1966 he found what he wanted in Charley Pride and produced his records for many years. Pride recorded Clement's songs "Just Between You And Me" and "Gone, On The Other Hand". He also produced Tompall And The Glaser Brothers, Sheb Wooley and, surprisingly, Louis Armstrong. One of his wittiest songs is called "(If I Had) Johnny's Cash And Charley's Pride".
In 1972 Clement formed the JMI label, signing Don Williams, but lost his money by backing a horror film set in Nashville, Dear Dead Delilah, with Agnes Moorehead in her last film role. He continued producing albums including Dreaming My Dreams (Waylon Jennings), Our Mother The Mountain (Townes Van Zandt) and Two Days In November (Doc Watson). He wrote the title track of Johnny Cash's Gone Girl; and Cash's hilarious liner notes indicate Clement's eccentricities. From time to time he recorded his own records including a highly regarded single, "Never Give A Heart A Place To Grow", and in 1978, he finally made an album - All I Want To Do In Life for Elektra Records.
In later years Clement took to performing as Cowboy Jack Clement. An example of his character and his self-confidence arose when he met Paul McCartney in Nashville. He advised the former-Beatles member, "Let's do 'Yesterday' and I'll show you how to cut that sucker right.' He also assisted with the recording of five tracks that featured on U2"s Rattle And Hum, and continued to produce recordings with Johnny Cash. Hardly prolific in the recording studio for himself, Clement released his second album in 2004, a quarter of a century after his debut.
