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Guy Clark, singer-songwriter – obituary
Guy Clark, who has died aged 74, was a country music and folk singer-songwriter and one of the finest exponents of brooding troubadour music in songs such as Desperados Waiting for a Train and LA Freeway (both released in 1975).
The son of a Texan lawyer, Guy Charles Clark was born on November 6 1941 in Monahans, West Texas. His grandmother ran a motel and some of her guests would later feature in his songs, notably Jack Prigg, the oil speculator in Desperados Waiting for a Train (1975).
When Guy was 16 the family moved to Rockport on the Texas Gulf coast and following a spell in the Peace Corps and a brief period of study at the University of Minnesota, in the mid-1960s he opened a guitar repair shop in Houston.
He also began performing in bars and coffee shops, and befriended some local musicians, including Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker and Kay (later KT) Oslin. During this time he met and married the folk singer Susan Spaw. Their son Travis was born in 1966.
The marriage did not last, however, and in 1969 Clark moved to San Francisco and opened another guitar shop. But he soon returned to Houston, where he met the painter and songwriter Susanna Talley. They then both moved to Los Angeles, where Clark worked for a company that made Dobro resonator guitars while playing any gigs he could find and trying to sell his songs.
In 1971 the couple moved to Nashville, where Clark had landed a publishing deal, and they were married the following year. After they settled in Nashville – where they would remain for some 40 years – the Clarks’ house became what his website described as “a gathering place for songwriters, folk singers, artists and misfits; many who sat at the feet of the master songwriter in his element, willing Guy’s essence into their own pens.”
But Clark did not release his debut album, Old No 1, until 1975, when he was 34. A collection of 10 carefully crafted country songs, the album included Desperados Waiting for a Train, which had already been recorded by several other artists and was later released by the Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings), Slim Pickens and Nanci Griffith. This first album also included LA Freeway, written about Clark’s experience – and that of so many artists – of thwarted dreams in Los Angeles.
On his next album, Texas Cookin’ (1976) – which included The Last Gunfighter, a heartfelt lament for times gone by – Clark was accompanied by musicians such as Emmylou Harris and Waylon Jennings.
Other albums included Guy Clark (1978), The South Coast of Texas (1981) and Better Days (1983). In 1982 Ricky Skaggs’s version of Clark’s Heartbroke reached No 1 in the country music charts and his songs were succesfully covered by numerous other artists including Johnny Cash, Vince Gill and Kenny Chesney.
Clark continued to release albums for the next three decades, notably Boats to Build (1992) and Dublin Blues (1995) which included a re-working of The Randall Knife, a touching spoken ode to Clark’s father, beautifully realised through the motif of the knife which he had taken with him to the Second World War.
Clark’s final album, My Favorite Picture of You (2013), which won a Grammy for best folk album, was inspired by a photograph of Susanna, who died of cancer in 2012.
A meticulous craftsman who honed his songs with the same attention to detail he applied to making guitars, Clark took a modest view of his talents. They were, he said, “just a way to while away the time until you die”.
Guy Clark stopped performing soon after Susanna Clark’s death.
He is survived by his son, Travis Clark.
Guy Clark, born November 6 1941, died May 17 2016