Guy Clark obituary

Guy Clark, who has died aged 74, once commented that his twin occupations of songwriting and guitar-building were “just a way to while away the time until you die”. The many artists and listeners who have been touched and inspired by his work would beg to differ. Clark was never a chart-busting phenomenon, but he was the embodiment of the painstaking craft of the songwriter, where meaning emerged from fine details, carefully observed and polished.

Though he had been making guitars and performing in clubs since the mid-60s, Clark did not release his debut album, Old No 1, until 1975, when he was 34. Instead of sounding like the work of a newcomer still finding his way, Old No 1 was a mature collection of 10 finely honed songs, most of which would become staples in the country and folk music community.

Indeed, Desperados Waiting for a Train had already been recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker, Tom Rush and Rita Coolidge before Clark’s version was released. Subsequently it was also recorded by the Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings), Slim Pickens and Nanci Griffith. Further songs from Clark’s debut album, notably LA Freeway, Like a Coat From the Cold and the magical childhood recollection of steam trains, Texas – 1947, came to be regarded as touchstones in his career.

This approach set the template for Clark’s progress. Texas Cookin’ (1976) was another peerless collection, once again featuring a stellar lineup of accompanying musicians including Emmylou Harris, Jennings, Walker and Rodney Crowell. Highlights ranged from the western hoedown of Virginia’s Real to The Last Gunfighter Ballad, an almost novel-like lament for changing times and old age.

Guy Clark (1978) was his first disc for Warner Bros, and found him experimenting with different sound textures as well as singing songs by other writers, including Crowell, Townes van Zandt and Jimmie Rodgers. After The South Coast Of Texas (1981) and Better Days (1983), Clark’s Warner days came to an end, though his profile was given a commercial boost when Ricky Skaggs topped the country music charts with Clark’s song Heartbroke, while Clark scored a minor hit of his own with Homegrown Tomatoes, from Better Days. Other notable covers of Clark’s songs included Vince Gill’s Top 10 country hit with Oklahoma Borderline, while Cash and Kenny Chesney named albums after their cover versions of The Last Gunfighter Ballad and Hemingway’s Whiskey respectively.

Clark would continue to release carefully wrought albums covering folk, country and Americana styles over the next 30 years, on the Sugar Hill, Asylum and Dualtone labels. Album titles such as Boats to Build (1992) or Workbench Songs (2006) reflected his handcrafted approach to his work. On Dublin Blues (1995), his evolving, long-view approach was illustrated by a new and more penetrating recording of The Randall Knife, which he had first recorded on Better Days. The song was an elegy to his late father, using the knife he had carried with him during the second world war as its guiding motif. Clark’s most recent release was My Favorite Picture of You (2013), which won a Grammy for best folk album.

Clark was born in Monahans, west Texas, to Ellis and Frances Clark. The family lived in his grandmother’s 13-room hotel, which was frequented by air force crews and oilmen and which fuelled the imagination of the young Guy (Jack Prigg, from his song Desperados Waiting for a Train, was a character he remembered from the hotel). After Guy’s father had returned from wartime service and completed his studies at law school, the family moved to Rockport, Texas. Guy was a keen football player and athlete at school, while also developing a passion for flamenco guitar and Mexican folk music.

In 1963 Clark joined the Peace Corps and underwent training in Puerto Rico, then briefly attended the University of Minnesota, but opted out and instead moved to Houston to open a guitar repair shop with a friend, Minor Wilson. He began performing in bars and coffee shops, and got to know a group of local musicians, including Van Zandt, Walker, Mickey Newbury and Kay (later KT) Oslin. The folk singer Susan Spaw became Clark’s first wife, and their son Travis was born in 1966.

The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1969 Clark moved to San Francisco and opened another guitar shop, once again with Wilson. He was back in Houston within a year, where he met the painter and sometime songwriter Susanna Talley. Her paintings would later adorn the album sleeves of Nelson’s Stardust and Harris’s Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town as well as her husband’s Old No 1. The couple moved to Los Angeles, where Clark played bluegrass music and tried to sell songs to music publishers while earning a crust making dobros at the Dopyera brothers’ Original Musical Instrument Company.

In 1971 the pair relocated to Nashville, Clark having secured a deal with the publisher Sunbury-Dunbar, and in January 1972 they were married, with Van Zandt as best man. “Townes van Zandt is one of the reasons I started writing songs,” Clark told the musicologist Ben Sandmel. “His work is a great yardstick. He consistently keeps me honest.”

Clark’s own body of work and meticulous approach to songwriting made him a guru for generations of songwriters, including a group of younger fellow Texans who included Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Griffith and Crowell. His Nashville home became a creative rendezvous for up-and-coming musicians, but Clark dismissed talk of his own elevated status. “I’m not trying to mentor anyone,” he said. “I just enjoy the process of co‑writing simply because of the give and take, especially with bright people who are good at what they do.”

In 2004, Clark was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2011, a two-CD set, This One’s for Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark, celebrated Clark’s 70th birthday with a batch of his songs performed by artists including Harris, John Prine, Rosanne Cash, Nelson, Crowell, Joe Ely, Kristofferson and Ron Sexsmith. It won album of the year at the 2012 Americana Honors & Awards.

Susanna died from cancer in 2012; a photograph of her featured on the cover of My Favorite Picture of You. Clark is survived by Travis, his sisters, Caroline and Jan, and grandchildren, Dylan and Ellie.