A CONVERSATION BETWEEN COWBOY JACK CLEMENT AND LOLA SCOBEY

Sometime in 1976-77

S: Sometimes I talk to people and they say nobody ever asks me the questions I wish they'd ask me.

C: Is it running?

S: Mhmm. I was reading Johnny Cash's bio

C: Yeah

S: ...the other night and he was talking in there about one time when he was in Memphis and he said that's when you were there and, did you read that book?

C: I haven't yet, I've got it but I haven't read any books in about ten years.... I don't think (Lola laughs) I quit reading books.

S: How come?

C: Aw, I just got tired of it.

S: Nothing good to read?

C: I'd just rather do something else. I may take up reading when I'm old, since I don't like fishing or anything like that. I'll go back and read Shakespeare. I've read a lot about him (laughs) I'll have to read some of his works.

S: Well, anyway, in this book, he was talking about one time that he and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins and you were in the studio, you were engineering and they got in there and did a bunch of gospel songs ... and you said "Would it be okay if I turn the tape on?".

C: I didn't say would it be okay if I turned the tape on or anything like that. I think I just decided I ought to turn it on since we had Elvis, and Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins all out there talking in the studio. And hanging around was Jerry Lee playing a piano song and they were jamming and messing around so

I just ran the tape for a couple of hours ... only thing is nobody can find the tape. (sound of clinking glass) I've asked Eb if he knows where it's at and I've asked Sam if he knows where it's at and he don't and I don't. It could be in somebody's stuff I haven't unpacked from Beaumont yet when I moved here in 65 ... but I never did have the original. I may have the copies for my own home entertainment, but I don't think I ever did. But one time I did make a bunch of... I told Sam this... there's a whole bunch of tapes I made for him one time for him to take home, so it had duplicates in case the building burned down or something. I have a feeling that tape might be in there with that stack of tapes, but as Sam don't seem to remember that particular tape. I think he's got it stuck away somewhere in his house.... and don't remember (chuckles).

[Web editor’s note: The date in question was December 4, 1956, and the tapes were indeed discovered in the mid-Eighties and issued on LP as “The Million Dollar Quartet”]

S: Do you remember what songs they were doing?

C: No... there was more talking on them than music.

S: There's more talking than music ... you mean talking between the songs?

C: As I remember it... they were all in there messing around and I decided we might outta turn on the tape machine. There was some good stuff going on. I don't remember how much of it was music and how much was talking. That was back in in 1957-58 ... it was just a normal kind of day around there, except they all happened to be around there at one. Elvis used to drop by quite a bit ... and mastered at Sun. I never did record those, but he used to drop by there quite often and sometimes during sessions . When he did a session sort of just vaporized.

S: Did he have that certain presence about him at that time? Would you have said this is going to be one of the biggest stars in the world?

C: He was at that time. He was big. This was in 57 - 58..he was really big. Internationally. He lived in Memphis and people were hanging out. So he'd come down and hang out. In fact, the day he got drafted, he came by to tell us. We were the first ones he told I think. (laughs) One day me and this guy , we were having a little crap game back in the control booth Elvis walked in with his motor cycle gear on and we thought he was a cop. (laugh) And Johnny Cash... they'd all come by , there was a restaurant next door... that was a whole part of that Sun thing ... there was a restaurant right next door. And the restaurant was a part of the flow of the whole thing. A lot of songs were finished over there.

S: Oh, what was the name of it?

C: Taylor's. Jerry Lee would come by and hang out at the studio and then go on and eat, next door. Jerry Lee would come by to have country fried steak, yeah.

S: Uh huh... that's gravy and stuff on it?

C: Yeah.

S: Did they serve kind of homestyle food?

C: Yeah and they had spaghetti and good hamburgers... .and a lot of Sun Records on the juke box. (laugh) We'd sit over there a lot and drink coffee. It was a meeting place. It was a part of the studio really. Every studio ought to have a restaurant. Now, down in Beaumont we had a restaurant right across the street which was a hang out.

S: That's not true in Nashville.

C: No, they don't have a studio with a restaurant next door. That's what they need, I think.

S: Hmmm

C: I'm gonna put a studio in the attic and have a restaurant in the kitchen. (laugh)

S: That's kind of the thing about Nashville studios, you know there's ... like Music Row is not a big area to hang out because it doesn't have places to eat and... it's very office oriented.

C: Yeah, that's the problem... Yeah, too much. You've got to have a place where people gather to do something other than do their musical thing. Eat.

S: What was Sam Phillips doing? Was he part of this sort of hanging around or ...

C: No ... he produced certain people and I produced certain people. Gradually he got to turning more of them over to me. It was quite a while before he turned me loose with Johnny Cash. But, one day he did.

S: What was the first thing you produced on him?

C: It was called "Home of the Blues". It was a pretty good song, but then the next one I did I think was "Ballad of a Teenage Queen". Now on that particular one, Sam was there so he ran the board 'cause I played guitar on it ... on the original, rhythm guitar. And then later I went in and overdubbed the voices. So Sam actually engineered ... you know it worked that way sometimes. Sometimes Sam would be there and do the first part of something and then I would finish it. Or vice versa. And then I got to teaching some of those, a couple of the guitar players. Or the bass player and the guitar player how to run the board, so I could be playing the guitar some on some things. And we had to do it all in mono. There wasn't any stereo.

S: So whatever you cut, that's what you had.

C: What you heard was it. We had to put the echo on it as we went and we didn't put any EQ --equalization. Left it flat 'cause the board was flat. We didn't have any knobs. All I had was an echo on each mic. Had five mics.

S: Do you think that was really a positive part of the sound that came out of there? The fact that back then you just had to cut it.

C: Yeah, it puts it in a different perspective. Puts a certain kind of musical or you know, sometimes music has to have a certain kind of pressure to put it up to full speed. And, that was part of it. You gotta do it on the fly and it makes it a different trip. You gotta get the juices up to it... different sort of point. But, it wasn't that hard to do, if you do it that way all of the time.

S: Well, was that the only equipment available then or was that the only equipment Sun happened to have?

C: Well, about a year after I went to work there, they came out with the 2 track. I think it's about a year. But we never did go ... all the time that I worked there from '56 to '59, we had mono. Now during the time Sam was building a new studio, but I never did work in it. He had 3 track. He went from mono to three track.

S: 3 track?

C: Yeah, that was the standard for quite a while. 2 track wasn't enough. You didn't have enough selectivity, but 3 track, you could split the band to 2 tracks and you could put the vocal on a track by itself, so you could bring it up and down later. Now you put everything on a separate track and mix it all later.

S: Is that what they were cutting on in Nashville.. .3 track?

C: Basically. Four track never did come in. They couldn't get the four track machine to work right back in those days. It wasn't reliable enough so the standard machine went from mono to 3 track. And then to 8 and they didn't stay there very long ... about a year and then they went to 16 track. And now it's 24.

S: Have you ever thought about going back and cutting a record just mono?

C: I wouldn't do it mono, but I might do it 4 track. In fact I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna have a ...get a board that's got 16 mike inputs and I can feed a 16 track to it later but I'm gonna go ahead and hook it up to this four track and do some stuff like that ...demos and stuff like that.

S: Do you think all the technology is maybe...do you think it's been a benefit to music or do you think possibly it's been a detriment?

C: I hope it hasn't proved itself one way or another yet. I think it's still in the formation phase. I think it's hurt it in some ways, but a lot of things have hurt music in some ways. The whole world affairs have hurt music in some ways. I think it'll get back more to ...well, now a days when you record, the nice thing about 24 track or 16 track is I can do it from the floor and I know that I've got everything ...I don't like to be in the control room anymore. I like to work from the floor-without ear phones if possible. The studio I'm building up in the attic is not gonna have ear phones. We're gonna have a normal ... a regular sounding room and speakers around, monitor speakers so we can hear each other. But that won't be a custom type studio where you've gotta go from one set-up to another. It'll be stylized for a group. Now, if we do it directly on the floor and the machines are running correctly then we'll be able to go in there later and mix it like we want it. If we cut it flat...if we don't have any echo or anything like that going in. That's the way I record. Whatever we want to add later, we can do it.

S: So you can just hear it in the raw unvarnished state?

C: I can hear it on the floor... I can hear the instruments. If they play right and it sounds balanced out there.. it's okay on the tape unless something went wrong technically.

S: Yes.

C: I like that when I'm singing, 'cause I don't have to worry about mixing it right then, just get the singing part.. .the performance part. So, I like 16 track and 24 track, but at the same time we could get back to doing some things the other way too... .certain types of things. Sometimes a bad mix makes it sound good, an unpredictability factor, sort of wiped out all this being able to mix them for months...years. There's one thing to it. You can always go back several years later and remix it, with a different perspective. It's good from that standpoint. Once you put echo on it, you're stuck with it. You can add it later.

S: You can't take it off.

C: You can't take it off.

S: Oh

C: So, you have to get used to it sounding kind of funny while you're cutting it. Studios sound funny. They don't sound natural. They're designed to sound funny....without a little echo added to give it an illusion of a room sound.

L: Oh, I see what you mean.. .because they're so dead they don't sound like you'd normally just hear it.

J: Yeah..I don't like the way studios sound. I think a recording studio is the worst place in the world to make a record.

L: As far as getting excitement on the record?

J: As far as doing it. Studios sound funny...too dead. It's disorienting to the musicians. Now, if you stand there and get used to it - you get used to it up to a point. (laugh) You always got to compromise somewhere. Musically, we gotta not compromise unless we damn have to. That's the way I feel about it.

L: What did you mean when you said the world of affairs in general has been detrimental to music?

J: Well, music is a part of everything, I believe. I think music runs exactly parallel to the whole state of world social affairs. Economy, everything, influences what music is. The lyrics, feel, rhythms, particularly the rhythms. All these ...all these records have got too good ... too professionally perfect where somebody sat and done something over and over and over. I don't think that's the way to make records either. That's the reason I got this band together. We learned about forty songs, played them around town and the ones that sounded good, we recorded. But not over and over. We'd record three or four and then listen back for a while or take a break, do three or four more and go on.

L: If the society affects the music and if they run kind of parallel, then if the music now is like really technical perfect, you're trying to do something different from that. Are you kind of bucking the whole society? The whole aura of it?

J: No, not if the timing was right. Get the product on the market when the public is ready, I ain't bucking nothing.

L: If you can anticipate when the society's going come back around?

J: Well, I've been saying for a year or so that people are going to get to dancing again. I think people are tired of sitting around doing nothing., just watching something or listening to something. It's time for people to get actively, physically involved. I wanna make music that gets people physically involved if it's only foot tapping, but that's where it starts. Now, it might start with a foot tap and that's what gets them on the floor. And if you've got something that just naturally gets people on the floor, they will put the coins in the old box and we all know that (laughs) as far as singles go, the juke box sales are where it's at. So, I ain't bucking nothing. If I can just get a record mixed, finished on time.

L: Why is it so hard to get this all completed?

J: I don't know. 'Cause I've got a deadline, that's why. And also because I just might rock along with singles for the summer and come out with an album in the fall. Of course, I've got to talk to Joe Smith about that.

L: Who's that?

J: He's the guy that runs Elektra. It's just a thought at this time. I think I can finish the album in time, but I think I can make it better if I can sort of get ao from it for a month or two. Because I've gone through about forty songs and I need a couple more, to fit with what I've already got that I like. I've got about six or seven things I like. We've cut about forty I guess.

L: You cut forty?

J: A lot of them I just cut for laughs, because we're doing those shows and stuff. I just do them so I have something to listen to at home. I wanna make an album that I can listen to at home for a long time. I don't want any bad cuts on it. I don't want anything that shouldn't be there.

L: When did you start working on it?

J: I have trouble finishing things. I ain't never finished a studio.(laugh)

L: When did you start working on the album?

J: A couple of years ago. (laugh) ... about forty-five years ago.

L: When you moved from Memphis to Nashville did you notice a big change in atmosphere in the studios between the two towns?

J: There's a whole different system. Memphis was a hang around place ...all these guys just hung around all the time. When I wanted to strike up the band, it was pretty easy to find, round up the boys and strike up the band. (laugh) It's like they do in the western movies ... it works every time. Round up the boys Gabby and we'll strike up the band, have a barbeque tonight out on the patio with dancing Spanish girls and the Sons of the Pioneers and ole Roy come riding in on Trigger, you know. (pause) What were we talking about?

L: I don't know, we got so wrapped up in this .

J: These guys...Roland Janes, J. M. Van Eaton, the drummer and Stan Kessler. Let's see... Jimmy Wilson and Charlie Rich, he played on a lot of those sessions. And there's a couple of other people. Billy Lee Riley, he played guitar and harmonica. He was the first guy I produced.

L: What kind of music did he do?

J: Well, he was pretty versatile. He could do rockabilly really good or he could do country kind of things..ballads. He's had a hit or two. He's a talented guy.

L: Sam Phillips told you to produce him or did you produce him before that?

J: No I produced him independently and brought Sam the master and that's how I started working there. He liked it and we made a deal on it and I went to work there a couple of weeks later, to learn how to be an engineer. L: You hadn't had any engineering before that?

J: Just in this little studio that Slim Morrison and I built in his garage...a very basic little thing.

L: And that was the first studio you built?

J: Yeah. Never did finish it. Scotty Moore came into it with Slim and they had a hit record...."Tragedy" on Fernwood which is the label me and Slim started.

L: Oh, yeah. Is that place still there?

J: The garage? It probably is, I don't know.

L: Everybody would just be hanging around, so would it be like a different bunch of musicians every time then or would it be more structured?

J: Mostly the same guys. Just sort of fall in every day. We would book them, you know sometimes, but most of the time if I wanted to round up the boys and strike up the band this afternoon, we could put it together this morning. Or maybe, let's just do it right now, boys, head for the studio, head for the control room. We'd be sitting over at Taylor's eating.. .well, let's go make a record. L: Would you like maybe finish up a song and think it was good and just go in and do it?

J: Yeah. We wrote songs in their entirety in Taylor's while somebody was cutting something next door... or rehearsing or warming up. I'd go write a song and we'd go cut it. (laugh)

L: Do you remember anything you wrote there?

J: No, off hand. I remember I wrote the other half of "Guess Things Happen That Way" there. I only had a verse and chorus and I wasn't gonna finish it unless somebody said they were going to cut it that day, so I finished it. And he cut it.

L: When you moved out of that kind of atmosphere over to Nashville was it like... did you like it or not?

J: I like some of the things about it. But, I didn't like the regimentation of it.

L: What did you like about it?

J: The professionalism of it and the fact that I had players that could learn songs fast.

L: Oh, you all would like have to practice a lot and run things over a lot.

J: Yeah. We worked out little things and ...but there wasn't that particular pressure to cut that particular song that particular day-work on it today and work on it again some more tomorrow... and sooner or later we'd get it. We worked on "Great Balls of Fire" ...we cut that four times. Worked on it 3 or 4 occasions. But, that was the nature of thing. We were working with the same guys each time. That has a lot to do with it. See, at Memphis we had a band. When I came here I didn't have a band. I had players, that could play, but I never did tell them play. But I never really did know what to tell them to play all the time.

L: Guess it's sort of like having a regular theatrical troupe ... first it's just putting on plays where you keep hiring different actors all the time.

J: Yes, that's very good analogy. The repertory companies ...that's what it was like. That's what I've got going now. I've got a band.

L: How would you pay musicians under those conditions?

J: We had some kind of hourly thing, which they liked because we did it all almost during the day. That left them free to play at night. So, that was extra money to them. I guess they were happy with it, whatever it was. It was a great bunch. Sometimes I don't even remember.. .but I remember a lot about those days there. I remember like where people were standing and certain things. I don't know what they were wearing, but I ...you know Sam would be standing here.

L: What kind of incidents stand out in your mind?

J: Is the thing running? (laughter) Incidents...nothing. (laughter) I don't know really, it's ...I could write a book about it. It was kind of like a soap opera. Like kind of one of those radio shows like Fibber McGee and Molly. We would just hang around the studio. There was not an office in the place. There was an office up front and a studio and a control room... and the bathroom was right off the control room, but all the business went on in the control room. Sam didn't have an office. I didn't have an office. I had a drawer in the console desk. And a storage thing or two. Everything took place in the control room.

L: Along building with a hall going down the center.

J: There was no hall. You had to go through the studio to get to the control room. (laughter) ...to get to the bathroom. But none of that seemed to, you know, and there was a glass window out there so sometimes a lot of people would just stand out there and look. But we finally put a curtain over that window. (laughter) Everything happened in the control room. L: How big was it?

J: It wasn't too big ... about like this room, a little bigger. I'd get in there after hours and I'd hang around some at night, but I got to where I'd drift off most nights and go across the river to the Cotton Club in west Memphis, where the guys would be playing. Meanwhile back at Sun, in the control room, there'd be no telling what going on until the wee small hours. I mean no telling, just people in there talking, playing tapes ... lots of playing tapes ... played them for anybody who'd walk in. (laugh) That's all we did. We'd make tapes and play them. That's all we did.. .and eat at Taylor's. Sit around and write songs. I wrote most of the songs out there in that building. L: You didn't have any business things to do at that time ... no responsibilities of Sun.

J: Just make records. No, I didn't have anything else to do. But, I mean,

I cut about four or five million sellers in one year, one time... four or five or six. I don't know.

L: Which songs and which year?

J: I don't know. There was a year or so when we had a whole bunch of hits

with Jerry Lee..."Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"..

some big things with Cash. I think I did most of that during the summer. There was one summer I cut about ten or fifteen records, but most of those were hits. And the rest of the time I water-skiied (laugh).

L: What was the Cotton Club?

J: A little night club with Clyde Leopard and his Snurley Ranch Boys. (laugh) With Barbara Pitmans on vocals and Stan Kessler on the steel guitar. Some of my other boys there.

L: How many people could get in there?

J: A whole bunch. It was a big dance hall. It's not there anymore. They closed them down. They were having clubs over there or something. But everybody in Memphis would go over there, and dance.

L: Was it strictly white?

J: Yeah, I guess it was. Must have been. It had to be back then.

L: Did you ever have much to do with black musicians? Did they ever drop in?

J: A few people... there was Prince Gaze Kirby. We used to hang out. He played at different clubs and I'd go out and catch him a lot. We made some records. Back then I was telling everybody that I was getting a black bird to sing country.

L: Is this after Elvis or before Elvis?

J: After. But I thought we'd have to teach somebody. But it was a long time later that Charley Pride came along , but he already knew how to sing country.

L: In Memphis was the music staying pretty segregated? Was there much in general going on between black and white musicians?

J: No, not at that time. There is now and has been for a while, but back then it was pretty well separate. There was a couple of black clubs that were sort of... they kind of opened and made white people welcomed, and they went.

L: Would Jerry Lee and people like that go?

J: I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember him wanting to go.

L: Well, you just hear so much about the early rockabilly thing and how it was so blues influenced and black influenced really. And I just wondered if that was something that just kind of came through the air or through actual people.

J: Actually, what we were into then was what you'd call more rockabilly, was kind of country. It was rockabilly. That's what they called it. And it had some black influence, but it wasn't spelled out as the country. (lots of the people were ex-country players, most all of them... in fact all that I can remember). Jerry Lee was country before he was rock and roll. And so was Conway Twitty and so was all of them. And there weren't many black people that played those kind of licks. And it was still pretty well r&b ... rhythm and blues and rockabilly. Now all those players that were playing that rockabilly, had heard all that music so it was part of their musical background ... even though they may have not played it, it was part of their musical background. So it was just hard to pick out the particular sort of black influence in some of that rockabilly music.

L: How did the rockabilly sound come about?

J: That was Elvis. That was with the slapping bass, ringing guitar and drums.

L: He was the first person to do that kind of music?

J: Bill Haley had a sort of similar thing going up around Philadelphia ... with the slapping bass but it wasn't much similar otherwise, except it had a kind of beat to it ... a lot of bass. His was sort of a cross between western swing and some of the rockabilly stuff and two or three other things. But most of the rockabilly stuff came out of Memphis.

L: Well, who gets the credit for that ... was it Elvis himself or Sam Phillips.. was it kind of several people hanging around together?

J: I think the way I hear it that when Sam got down to the studio, he hired Bill Black and Scotty Moore. I think that's where they met, but I am not sure about that. But I think Sam told Elvis to come into the studio at a certain time and he furnished the bass player and Scotty because that was all that was on the record was Elvis' rhythm guitar and slapping bass and electric guitar. Now whether they had met prior to that I'm not sure. But, I think it's along those lines.

L: So how much after that did you start working for Sun?

J: I came there a couple of years later. I came there in June of 56. That was several months after Elvis had left. "I Walk the Line" was a big hit when I came there.

L: What type of music was on this record that you brought and played for Sam Phillips?

J: It was rockabilly one side and then I had three sides. I had a couple of rockabilly things and a slow thing. And we wound up putting out the two rockabilly. One of them was a kind of a slow thing called "Trouble Bound" and the other side was "Rock With Me Baby". It had two slapping basses on it. I did it at WMPS radio.

L: You cut it there in the radio studio?

J: Yeah, they used to make a lot of records in radio stations back in those days.

L: You were coming out of a kind of a bluegrass background? Is that right?

J: I played bluegrass for a good while up around Washington, D.C. and Wheeling and Boston. But I played other stuff too ... you know regular country sort of hits. And I played Hawaiian music for a while and different things.

L: Were you playing steel guitar and mandolin then.

J: Mostly steel guitar... sometimes at different times. I never was a very good steel guitar player ... kind of commercial though. (mock clearing of throat and laugh)liked it over in Arkansas.

L: Did you see much evolution of the Sun sound the three years you were there?

J: Well, it , yeah, we added some things to it.. When I went there it was mostly kind of like electric guitar, vocal, drums, sometimes a piano ... but it was mostly guitar, drum and bass. And we got to adding voices to it sometimes.

L: They weren't using any back-up voices at first?

J: Not very much. It wasn't kind of the norm. We first got into that I think with Johnny Cash .... "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and some of those other things after that. And, piano became a pretty regular part of it. It sort of evolved as the musicians came along.

L: Did you go to Nashville from Memphis ... let's see ... at some point you were in Houston.

J: Well, I was in Beaumont actually. I never lived in Houston, but I spent a lot of time there in the early 60's. I left Sun in '59 and started Summer Records.

L: Summer Records? S-U-M-M-E-R?

J: Yeah. We had all these nutty slogans send out ... Summer hits, summer not, hope you like the ones we got (laugh)...Summer in Spain ..Summer in France..if you don't like our records you ain't got a chance. (laugh) Summer poor... summer rich..if you don't buy our records you're a ... I don't remember how that one went.

L: Who's the we? Who else was doing this with you?

J: Summer Records? Nobody. (laugh)

L: This is the (laughs)

J: I sort of ran out of money. I blew about 20 grand there right off the bat. I was still getting writer royalties from Sam... in fact, I think I made more money the year I left there than before. Because they were adding up. So, I sort of took the writer royalties and started Summer Records. I dillydallied around with that about a year and then l went to work for Chet...but I still lived in Memphis.. I commuted.

L: Why did you leave Sun?

J: I got fired..

L: For what?

J: (laugh) Nobody knows. Me and Bill Justis got fired the same night. Some kind of a misunderstanding.

L: What was going on that night?

J: Well, what was going on was we were gathering in the control room and there was this cat named Cliff Gleaves who was travelling around with Elvis. Somehow or another Cliff was staying at my house which was over there in Frazier, kind of ...and it was snowing. I wanted to go home before I got stuck out in the snow. So, Cliff and Sam were over there in the control room talking and I walked in and said something like come on, let's go. I didn't mention anything like it was snowing or anything ...I think I did mention it was snowing but nobody heard me. Anyway, Sam took some kind of offense at that (laughing) I was saying kid don't hang around here with this character.. .come on let's go. But, what I was really saying was let's get out of here because we gotta get over that bridge before it snows too much. And Justis was in there and we'd been doing a session or something ... so next day I came in and there was this letter... one for me and one for Justis...same letter... we both got fired. (laughs)

L: Had things been getting kind of rocky in your relationship?

J: A lot of people in the music business have been fired by Sam. It's kind of a status symbol you know?

L: Oh really?

J: Sure.

L: Like who else?

J: Oh, I don't know … Billy Sherrill, guess he was fired ... Charlie Tallent ... Kelso Hurston...bunch of other people. It's kind of a club of Sam Phillips ex-employees.

L: All those people used to work over in Memphis?

J: Sherrill worked here. Sam had a studio in Memphis. And then Sam opened up this publishing office here one time and Kelso Hurston ran it.

L: Was his personality like that . just ...

J: I don't know.I think it be more like (sounds of lots of laughing in background) people get tired of each other. you know? ...sort of run the garnet and it's time for you to split.

L: So he wasn't one to let it linger on.

J: I can't even explain any of that. I don't sort of remember much about any of that. He never seemed like he fired any body yet looking back it seems like everybody got fired (laugh)...excepting the artists ... they all left of their own accord.

L: Was that due to personality or just...

J: They left when their contracts were up.

L: They saw bigger and better things.

J: Most of them. Whatever.

L: What was it about him that caused ... did he attract all that talent or did he see it and grab it?

J: He... if somebody did something he liked. he had a way of showing his appreciation for it. He either loved it or it wasn't no good at all. But, if

he dug it. that was it. He'd play it over and over and over and over. (phone rings. Jack answers.. .yes she left and she told me to she'd catch up with you later. Where you at? She's supposed to be back in a while. Okay. Bye. HANGS UP PHONE.

L: So he'd just make you feel so good you just really wanted to...

J: He'd give you a reaction. Either a yes or a no. If it's yes ... it's a big fine YES... people wanted to please Sam. Still that way,...all the people that left Sam said you wanna please him. First thing that I ever did that really pleased him was Jack's Tracks.

L: The studio over on 16th?

J: Yeah.

L: Why?

J: He just loved it. The greatest studio in the world. When he walked in before he ever heard anything. (laugh) And then when he heard something...

L: He keeps up with what everybody's doing that he used to work with.

J: Not necessarily.

L: But you and he are in contact?

J: He calls me.... and he talks an hour.

L: About what you're doing or about what he's doing?

J: About whatever he wants to talk about. Or I call him sometimes. I ain't seen him in a couple of years.

L: Just talk on the phone.

J: Yeah. I feel like I see him every so often 'cause I talk to him on the phone. When he calls you might as well be prepared for an hour. But he pays for the calls (big laugh). I love to talk to Sam. He still tells me lots of... I appreciate him now... I didn't appreciate him. I thought he was full of shit back then.

(laugh) Really. Well I just didn't understand his genius. His genius is reacting.

L: What if he reacts no. Is it equally no.

J: That's the only way I ever hear it. (laughs Take it away. That don't move me. He would cone in there beside me and said that don't move me. (laughs) He was great. He just inspired people to play for him and that's what music's all about. That's what a conductor does. He just didn't do it with a baton. But when you played it right he knew it. He was a lot more into feel than I was. I was more into machines back then... the players were something to make the machines work. (laugh) Really.

L: That seems so different from the way you are now.

J: Yeah. (laughs) Of course I was only about 26. That was 20 years ago.

L: So you just wanted the musicians to come in and do what you heard.

J: Huh?

L: You just wanted the musicians to come in and do something you heard in your head or ...

J: No. it was more like we went in there we never knew what we would do.

That was the most striking difference between Memphis and Nashville. In Memphis it was a feeling..you know..you just go in the studio, don't know what the hell you're going to do...maybe nothing. Don't have to do anything. Don't, we'll do it tomorrow. But here ... you went in to do a certain kind of thing.

L: Sounds like you're using the Memphis techniques in your new album.

J: Well. If I got any sense, I should be using every technique I learned along the way. (laugh) I'm using it in terms of the way we try to get the cuts. It's not done over and over.... but even back then we did things over and over, but we did them on different days. So, if we did them over and over we had that music practiced...on that song ... the next time we got in the studio we were fresh. Best cuts usually come early. But there were certain things like "Whole Lotta Shakin'" was one take ... we didn't even run it down. We'd been cutting something else and we were cutting it over and over and we said let's do something else for o while and come back to it. So I walked out in the studio and said, "Let's do something else for a while and Jerry Lee's bass player, who was also his brother-in-law ...no he was his cousin and later become his father-in-law... anyway... so Jerry did that thing they'd been doing out on the rood people like so much ... and old Jerry said Okay ...I said let me go turn on the tape machine. So I walked in and turned on the tape machine and Jerry Lee did "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On". They traveled on the road with him. So, the same guys, they just did it.. and I turned on the tape machine and we didn't even play it back ... then ... we played it back later and we played it back all into the night. (laugh)

**** *********** ******

L: Well, were Allen and Dickey involved in Summer Records at all?

J: No.. .they were just hanging around.

L: How did you get to know Chet Atkins?

J: Well, while I was working at Sun, I decided I wanted to make a record ... and I decided I wanted to do mine in Nashville. I didn't want to cut in Memphis. (laughs) I didn't want that sound in my record (laugh) I wanted the sound of clean and country, but I came over here and cut it.

*** TAPE SIDE #2***

J: ... in 1957 or something like that ... when I came over here, so Chet took me out to lunch.

L: Which one was that?

J: "Ballad of a Teenage Queen"...it was the number one country song that year. And "I Guess Things Happen That Way" followed that. I had a hot streak going. Then I came over that record and I hired Bob Moore on bass and I brought my piano player and I played guitar and I think that's all I had on it.

L: And you were cutting who?

J: Yeah ... and the record came out and it went to number 9...called "Ten Years".

L: That was you singing?

J: Yeah..I got a copy of it - somebody bought me a copy of it the other day if you wanna hear it. It was an instrumental of mine on the country charts.

L: That was on Sun?

J: Yeah. But it was cut here at RCA. Anyway, Chet heard it down the hall and afterwards he asked me if I'd like to go to work for RCA (laughs). I said I don't know. So a couple of weeks later, no just a few days later, he called me in Memphis and wanted to know if I'd fly up to New York. I said sure, love to. (laugh) So, I went up there and talked to Steve (Sholes?)but they wanted me to move to New York and I told him I wouldn't have no part of that shit.

L: Why New York instead of Nashville?

J: They had Chet in Nashville ... they wanted another hick ... another boy in New York, you know they decided that country boys were where it's at right now ... and I'd produced some hit records in Nashville so.. I told them I didn't like their speakers.

L: Their speakers?

J: I didn't want to go to New York at all. I might do it now, though. I can get into it now. Get me a place in the Village and hang out with some of my old actor friends that I met while I was making that movie. Some of them theater people up there.

L: How did Chet strike you when you met him?

J: He was about the same as he is now-damn good guitar picker.. good talker when he's talking ... good ole boy. And he's very intelligent.

L: Were you an admirer of his.

J: Yeah. When I was teaching dancing at Arthur Murray's I had his version of "Wildwood Flower? It came up every 2Oth record on the fox trot channel (laugh) It wasn't all that terribly danceable but they kept it on there as long as I was there and they like it.

L: When was it you did dancing instruction?

J: That was around 1954-55.

L: Oh, that was even before Sun. Was that like a full time thing or..

J: The funny thing about it ... most of the records I made weren't really danceable. That's why I'm telling,you I was really more into machines. The people were just something to make the machines sound good to me.

L: Oh, you were very engineer oriented.

J: I loved the machines. I got interested in a studio, but I didn't have the money to have what Sam had there. Oh, it wasn't long before I was going to add to it. I started adding things to it pretty quick.

L: To what Sam had?

J: Like when I went there if you wanted to put echo on something you had to put two mics side by side ... and run the second one through a second machine. Well, I didn't know how to change it, but I said, "Couldn't we get it so we wouldn't have to do that?" Sam said, "Yeah. How do we do it?" And then I got it to where we could have echo on each mic. Now it's tape echo. We never did build a chamber. We knew how, but we just did never do it. That couldn't have cost much. We had a place out in the back. And one time I decided we ought to have an office behind the control room, so I built it.

L: You built it?

J: Yeah I had already done some carpenter work. I used to watch carpenters when I was a kid when they built a house. I had a carpenter help me line it out and then I poured the slab and he put the strings up and I laid the concrete block. He and I framed it and I took it from there.

L: That's when you were like teenagers?

J: That's when I was going to college. This was ...I had been working at Arthur Murray's in about '50, yeah about '54 I guess.

L: Had you been sort of technically oriented before that. .like why were you so into machines?

J: 'Cause you could make records; and I was starting to get interested in the record business. And Sam Phillips had made a lot of money with Elvis Presley with Carl Perkins; and them people. I was in Memphis when this was all going on.

L: Oh you grew up in Memphis?

J: Yeah. But I had been away from there since age 17 which was 1948 when I went in the Marine Corps. for 4 years. I was gone and then after I got out I hung around Austin for a year or so and then I tried Wheeling for a while and wound up in Boston. And I went back to Memphis. I was going to go back there and start a restaurant sort of rest up for a couple of weeks, get warm, thawed out. I was there in the midst of winter. It was hot when I got there but it got cold shortly thereafter. I wasn't one to wear much clothes ... a sport jacket... that was about as far as I was willing to go in any kind of weather.

Anyway, 'cause I don't stay unless I'm going to be out in it. Now if I'm going from house to car ... all this winter I been going to the health club in bare feet and sandals.. .the ones I can just step into. So when I get there I just flip them in the bottom of the locker and flip off the shirt and a couple of other things and away we go. I don't have to fool around putting socks on my feet. I get my feet back into the sandals.

L: Economy of action.

J: My feet dry off on the way home and then I put on my shoes ;and socks. If I'm five miles away from here I'll come over to the house to take my shoes and socks and get my sandals if I'm going to the health club. I hate to fool with putting socks on after I get out, of the water.

L: They won't pull up.

J: It's a little bit off the subject.

L: So you -,:ere in Boston and came down to Memphis to get warm.

J: I was going to stay a couple of weeks and go back to Washington,

L: What did you like about it?

If: Well, I was there for 26 months in the Marine Corps. and I was stationed in a place that's right sort of in town; 7 or 8 blocks from the Capitol.. place where they had the Marine band rehearse there and the Commandant of the Marine Corps lived at one end of the parade ground and they had 3 or 4 generals that lived there and they had barracks detachment which was the drill team and ceremonial stuff and M.C.I., Marine Corps Institute which was a correspondence school. And they had the drum and bugle corps which covered one big city block. Now the band members didn't live on the base. They just rehearsed there. The main Marine band, it was great.

L: You were on the drill team?

J: Yeah, I was on the drill team. And we did, it was all ceremonial stuff. Drills - Funerals, firing squads, parades ... all that stuff, you know.

L: How'd you get on the drill team?

J: They said, "Clement, get on the drill team." Not only was I on the drill team. but I think I was the oldest member. Most of them got shipped out to Korea. They shipped us all out except 8. I happened to have an MP FIGS classification number and they don't take MP's when they first start. They take them later when there's something to occupy. Behind the lines. Ain't no behind the lines at first. Anyway, they weren't taking anybody that had an MP MOS. By the time they started doing that, I didn't have enough time left in my enlistment. It had already been extended a year. I joined for three years and then I extended it a year.

L: Just because you like doing all that stuff?

J: I kind of dug it, but I didn't volunteer for it.

L: Oh. they extended you.

J: Oh. yeah. yeah. yeah... but I was right in Washington. D.C. and the band box was right directly across from the gate and the campus grill was up the street and two-three other places. And I had these little gigs going all over... a dance on Saturday night and I had three wall lockers one with ...all the shit you sling on the bunk and parade in and one with a couple of guitars and stuff and some other things that I would ...and a PA set ... microphone.. whole thing. And my big Gibson sitting on top of the wall lockers.

L: The same one that you have now?

J: Yeah. I bought it new... never put a scratch on it...other people have done that. But anyway. I had two foot lockers ... but they dug my music. I was always bringing fiddle players and stuff. There's a lot of fiddle players around Washington. D.C. That's where I met the Stonemans... who were a bluegrass kind of folk oriented ...Pop Stoneman was kind of an old time recording star, back in the days of Jimmie Rodgers. He had this whole family of kids that played. I used to produce them. And Scott. He died. Scott, the fiddle player... he died in the barracks ... strike up the band.

L: Had you been into bluegrass before you went in the Army? ...into the Marines?

J: No, I got into it in Washington. D.C. when I heard Earl Scruggs... Earl's breakdown ... when I first got interested in bluegrass. I was more specifically interested in the banjo. I loved the banjo... fiddle I like it too ... mandolin I liked pretty well ... but the banjo what was attracted me to bluegrass. L: You must have been a Ronnie Stoneman fan.

J: She was one of the Stoneman's. She was just a little kid at that time. She was the second generation ... the second batch. Some of them that wound up in the group called the Stonemans were just little kids back then ... Scott the fiddle player he was great and we played all around and I had this dance job going on in southern Maryland and three cars parked outside the barracks.

L: Three cars?

J: None of them were any good (laughs) One of them would usually run.

L: Do you remember what kind they were?

J: Yeah... a 37 Buick... a 41 Lincoln and a 32 Chevrolet. (laughs) The Lincoln was the one that ran the most. But I made more money playing music than I did as a Marine.

L: You had like a day job with the Marines more or less and could be off on the evenings and weekends? I had guard duty every once in a while I was on the gate... but I wrote songs while I was on the gate. That's where I first started writing songs.

L: Did you take a guitar with you?

J: No. I just wrote them out. I do it the other way now. put the music and the words together at the same time. When I first started I'd write lyrics and then put a to tune to it. I'd pretty well have some in my head as I went along.

L: Did you write anything that you still like now?

J: Yeah. but I can't find any of them... I had one called "Automatic Woman". It came out on a record by Texas Jim Robertson one time. That was my first record

L: Was that the first song you ever got cut?

J: Yeah ... "Automatic woman with a push-button heart" (laugh)...still do as a matter of fact.

L: Have you ever found one?

J: No, but if technology ever speeds up … I didn't think we'd be on the moon by this time... if things speed up, I could find me an automatic woman and take a ride on a space ship in my time. I'll settle for a ride in a space ship.

L: Would you really like to do that? ... go to another planet?

J: Oh, yeah... that's what I plan to do. I want to be a space man. Just gotta speed up technology. I don't want to sit in no space ship for two or three years though. We wanna go faster than the speed of light. No, I'd like to ... I'd settle for going to the moon or Mars. It would be nice to go to Alpha Centauri, but that's 3.8 light years away. I don't want to sit in no space ship for three or four years.

L: What would you do when you got there?

J: Take a look around.

L: And then come back.

J: Go...on. I don't ever want to come back (laughs) If I blast off from Mother Earth, I don't want to have to go and turn around and come back... go all the way. It's like if I'm going to run down the street here. I'm going to start running and have somebody meet me down here later so I don't have to walk back.

L: You don't like coming ...retracing...

J: No. I don't never know how far to go then. If I just go till I'm tired and somebody picks me up ...I can go as far as I want to go. I might go further that way. When I blast off into outer space, unless it's to go to the moon or something ... we're heading for another solar system, I wanna not be planning on coming back. Go all the way around and come back.

L: Once you've made the complete loop of the solar system..

J: Circumnavigate the universe... that's what Captain Video was into in 1952. Used to watch television. I watched television for an hour or two in 1952.

L: And it was all Captain Video?

J: That's the only thing I watched. I just remembered that one time... circumnavigating the universe... for weeks and months. I guess he did it. I don't know.

L: He could still be doing it.

J: It would take a long time to do that because the universe is 200 years in diameter.

L: It takes 200 years to..

J: 200 years in diameter ... that's light ... this galaxy. So to circumnavigate the galaxy... I guess he'd...

J: Now that's a good deal...

L: My goodness...

[Somebody who has been working on Jack's house apparently walks into the room]

J: A carpenter that pays me...

X: I made a mistake. I caught it. That's your money.

J: Well maybe that oughta go to Carol. I'll take it later. Thank you Gerald.

L: He's the guy working on the yard?

J: He's working on the yard and he's working on trees.. .working on the studio in the attic. He put a swing out back and a picnic table and a thing for the garbage cans. And built that bridge out there and the fence and he built the studio B. Remember that?

L: Oh yeah.

J: And he built a mausoleum for me one time when I did a horror movie. And he does plumbing and electrical work... planted the potatoes this morning. (laugh) He built that rock wall there to keep it from flooding. The garden got to be a little more

of a project than I thought. I didn't know I was going to have to build a dike.

L: Is it all flowers? Do you grow any vegetables or anything?

J: It's going to be all vegetables.

L: Oh, right out there?

J: Potatoes, pole beans, tomatoes, squash ... who knows what else.

L: Do you cook all that stuff?

J: Some of it you eat raw. Like watermelon(laugh)

L: (laughs) Right.

J: Cantaloupe. I like squash..steamed and kind of crispy.

L: I knew this guy just walking down the street munching on a raw squash like he was eating an apple.

J: Yeah,, that's not bad. I like it a little bit in salads ... with salt on it, it's pretty good. Rooney here is my guitar player, my rhythm player, my upside down rhythm player... says he's a gardener. He's also a [ ].

L: Oh. He's got a masters degree in Greek and Latin. He's from Boston. He used to catch my act when I was playing up there as Jack and Buzz and Jack the Bayou Boys.

L: That was after you got out of the Marines? You had that group and went up to Boston?

J: Mhmm. I was in Boston for about a year playing clubs. Roy Clark and Jimmy Dean were playing clubs during that time... in that area.

L: Why would Washington, D.C. have all that going on?

J: Well, I'll tell you why... because there's an awful lot of southerners in Washington, D.C. working for the government. And misplaced southerners like to get out and get friendly. Washington, D.C. was the hillbilly to the hillbilly towns back then. They was all over the place.

L: Were they there in the service too or did they just come there?

J: No ... it was one of the big country markets. Hank Snow really got started there quicker than anywhere else except Texas I think. There's something about southerners away from home ... sort of friendly...and a lot of them together of them together in the same town ... at least a lot of them would come to these clubs. It's a homesick trip in the first place and then they get there and have good times. It was a fun town. I loved it. I knew a lot of people there. I knew a lot of people outside of the barracks. There was a barber on the base. They sang around the barber shop an awful lot. I would always hang out. I never have done anything. I never have actually worked ... except the Marine Corps. Got me a few times with that guard duty, but otherwise I was more or less able to just sort of float around and hang out... pick the guitar. And the drum and bugle corps. was right upstairs and the drum major taught me how to play "Leibestraum" on the mandolin. And we'd go up there and strike up the band.

L: What would you play in these groups in Washington?

J: Played guitar. No, I played rhythm guitar ... sometimes I played steel guitar. I played bass there the first summer.. .when I first got out of the Marine Corps. I played around North Beach sort of 'til I shed of them I'd loaf around for a while. Go boat riding, chase girls ... didn't get much money, but they furnished us free food and everything. So I played bass there for a summer and then we got to Saturday night... it was kind of a prestige thing over at the Charles Hotel down in southern Maryland.

L: Who was in that band?

J: I had me and Buzz and Don Owens on bass and different people on bass and some of the Stonemans sometimes. Ralph Jones played with us there... he was a dobro player. Ever heard that record "Sparkling Brown Eyes"? ...the original.

L: No.

J: He played the dobro on that.

L: So, you all were doing kind of bluegrass and country?

J: Yeah, and also they would dance to it.

L: Little swing?

J: Yeah... no it wasn't swing, it was a lotta sorta Paul Jones stuff. Hoedown stuff we did a whole lotta that.

L: "Alabama Jubilee"...

J: Yeah, we did that but it was more like the regular fiddle things..."Boil That Cabbage Down"..."Flop Eared Mule".. ."Orange Blossom Special"...and I'd sing the Webb Pierce hits ... so we had a pretty well-rounded sort of program.

L: They had music like that in the St. Charles Hotel?

J: Yeah. Every Saturday night. That was a nice little place. Owned by Ollie Olson, the smiling Swede.(laugh) He'd walk out there and one.. wander over off to another table. I'd be up there just singing away. We were pretty good, too. Buzz was great on mandolin. He's still one of the one time bluegrass men around the place.

L: What's he doing now.

J: I don't know. He's still up in Washington. And Scott Stoneman was a good fiddle player. So we did make some pretty good music together ... in that hotel. I can't say a whole lot for north beach, playing the bass in my bathing suit. (Knock at the door) Come In.

X. Can I have company.

J: Wait a minute... wait a minute... we're being on tape.

TAPE IS TURNED OFF.

L: Well, why did you leave Washington?

J: Well, we went over there and I listened to WWVA ...the Wheeling Jamboree.. the world's original jamboree. And they auditioned Buzz and they liked that but what they were really looking for was a comedy act ... sort of a Homer and Jethro type thing. So me and Buzz tooled up and became a comedy act, about three weeks later. And joined the Wheeling Jamboree.

L: What kind of jokes were you ding?

J: Oh, things like me and my girlfriend were having a bridge party and the cops came along and looked under the bridge. (laugh) You know Joe... Joe who? ...Joe Smith... what's that name again? Who?...Joe ... Joe Smith..never heard of him. (sings) somewhere over the rainbow oh bluebirds fly... and that wasn't where my heart was at... being a clown ...I wanted to be singing Webb Pierce songs

L: Being a star?

J: Ballad singer yeah...

L: Shel Silverstein said he went into the music business just to get women.

J: I don't know any that do. (laugh) Do you?

L: Well, I don't know. (laughs) My research tells me that's true. (laughs)

J: Seems like it is ... seems like a hell of a business ... meaningful motivation there in that direction.

L: But clowns don't get as many as stars.

J: No. So we did that bit for a while and then WCOP in Boston wanted to get their jamboree going so they imported Buzz and me. First we planned to commute go from Wheeling to Boston every week.

L: How far is it?

J: 800 miles. It didn't bother me a bit. I just loved to get out on the highway. ...and go 800 miles.

L: Really?

J: Really. Loved it. I enjoyed every bit of the travelling. I loved it.

L: Just what ... seeing they new stuff or being on the road.

J: Just being on the road. Never know what's down there ... just stop and see. It looks like it's got a great hamburger... a little on the greasy side.

L: So I take it the commuting didn't...

J: We didn't commute. We got to Boston and never did go back to Wheeling. But I was already. We played one over New England.

L: As Buzz and Jack?

J: Yeah.

L: What was the name of the band you had in Washington?

J: Jack Clement and the Tennessee Troupers. Well, that's no good 'cause you can't see it on the radio. You can't see the spelling on the radio. We worked. Got them into the Charles Hotel.

L: Did you play live radio shows?

J: We used to be on WDND in Baltimore.. for a while there. And then it was me and Buzz and Mac Wiseman...he came along and we came over.

L: Who else was on the Opry thing in Boston?

J: Elton Britt and couple other people that were pretty well known. Then a lot of unknowns and then each week they'd have the star... guest star.... from Nashville or someplace. You'd broadcast from Symphony Hall at first and then they moved it to the John Hancock Auditorium.

L: Had you had much communication about what was going on musically in Nashville?

J: Just with the records I heard on the radio.

L: You would never go over there and stuff like that?

J: No. We came down there and auditioned for the Grand Ole Opry...one time.

L: What happened?

J: They said they'd let us know (laugh) ...they liked it, they said

you need a record ... is what they said. And they had Bill Monroe and we were pretty bluegrassy...the thing we auditioned was pretty bluegrassy for the Grand Ole Opry. It was good. It was me and Scott and Buzz and Jack Stoneman on bass. Good group. But it wasn't anything all that new... we didn't have... we had some original songs but we couldn't talk.

L: You mean like the chit chat type?

J: Yeah. That MC trip. This was kind of early. We were a good group, but nobody talked. Buzz talked and he wasn't too hot at it. I finally got to doing most of the talking and I like that. Nightclubs, where you do it every night ... you get to where you talk yourself through a 45 minute set and never sing a song. Nobody knows the difference. (laugh) I've done that.

L: Did you take up Shakespeare at that time or was that something more recent.

J: I never did take up Shakespeare I just ...through the years you notice that you keep hearing quotes and keep finding out it's Shakespeare. All the things you hear through the years and said that was Shakespeare. It's happened so many times you start to get curious about the old boy (laugh) I want to read Shakespeare in my old age. See, that's the reason I'm going to read books. I'm going to save them all up. I'll get the books first...I do have a library.

L: Just waiting...

J:I've been compiling a library since I quit reading books... .just in case I ever want to read another book ... which is not likely. Possible, but not likely. No, I'll probably read some. I never have finished a book on movies. I've started some.

L: Well, maybe that's one you learn by doing.

J: I think you learn anything by doing. I'm interested in Shakespeare from the standpoint of him as a person with a personality. ...and when I read it I kind of read back to what was him. But I don't know if I actually ever read a play all the way through... I've seen a couple of them. I've seen Othello with Orson Welles and I think I saw a live one in college ...Julius Caesar ... and some of Hamlet. I want to get Hamlet on a video cassette...with Lawrence Olivier.

L: What kind of personality do you think Shakespeare had?

J: I'm not even sure that he was a person. He might have been a committee. And nobody can really prove he really existed.

L: Kind of like Jesus Christ.

J: Yeah... along those lines. I think he might have been Queen What's Her Name that hired some guy named Shakespeare to go down and put on her plays.... play the role of some guy named William Shakespeare. I just made that one up. (laugh) I'm more interested in things from the standpoint of how I would make a movie about it. If I was going to do a movie about Shakespeare I'd maybe start with the premise that he was a woman..who hired this male actor to get out and play her.

L: She'd stay at home and write it and send him out 'cause women didn't do stuff like that.

J: Right, not if they're queens. Because Shakespeare took the tickets and everything.

L: He did?

J: So I heard ...I wasn't there, you know. Second-hand information ... but I hear he would take up the tickets and the show starts. He was the director, an actor...not as good an actor as he was the other things.

L: So you can kind of identify with him?

J: In the sense of the show goes...you know... put on a show. If you have to write the thing. That's the reason I wrote songs in the first place ... because you need a song.

L: To do a record?

J: Yeah. I could figure that one out when I was still in the Marine Corps.

See I planned to go right to the Grand Ole Opry when I got out of the Marine Corps. Didn't work out quite that way. But anyway, even back in the Marine Corps., I knew that I needed some songs to sing ... original things ... so where are you going to get some? So I started writing them. Now I got a whole lotta songs and books here so I don't need to write any more songs ... sing them now... I got plenty of songs to sing. (laugh)

L: Stockpiled.

J: But I'm piling a few more... Lamar and Richey have written one called "I'm Falling In Love With My Hands" (laughs)

L: Sounds like one he would write. So you came from Boston just on a vacation to Memphis and then what?

J: Well I got back there and ran into Neal Rape who I had gone to high school with ... well grammar school too ... and he told me he was teaching dancing at Arthur Murray's, but that was quite natural 'cause old Neal had always been Daddy Longlegs all through school. He was always the dancer. But then I saw

this little ad in the paper a week or so later and they were advertising something about a dance instructor. No experience necessary. So I called the number and set up an interview. I went and talked to Zula and found out you go to training school class for 6 weeks. They don't pay you during that time. But if you'll do that, they'll pay you. So I did that. I never danced a lick in my life.

L: You hadn't?

J: No. But I had good rhythm... (sings) I got rhythm... so I picked right up on that and became the star of Arthur Murray's . I actually did teach some people to dance. And they can still dance no matter where they are in the world.

L: What made you think you wanted to do that instead of playing on the Boston Jamboree?

J: Well, I don't know. Mostly because I didn't have any money and my old man was getting a little tired ...I got as much out of him ...I had sort of said that I would give it a year... if I didn't make the Grand Ole Opry in a year I'd go to college. .or something. So he wasn't making it too easy for me to get out of town ... in the first place and I kind of dug the idea of dancing around with them chicks all the time. I loved dancing. It was kind of fun if you learned a couple of steps. So I kind of got into it. Loved it. Then we'd dance all day and the we'd go out... always had parties and stuff. But I got real sick of it real quick. Just couldn't stand the thought of pulling somebody through the tango for the next hour... I'm going to see the Caine Mutiny" across the street. I aborted the session and didn't show up. I got fired. But then they offered to hire me back

as a junior. That's a step above instructor. Where you take them in there and sign them up. (laughs) But I didn't care about that though. That whole thing was much too sales oriented. And if you wanted to make any money at all you had to (702) for the hours you taught. If you wanna make any money at all, you gotta hustle.

L: What's it like trying to teach somebody to dance who doesn't have any rhythm?

J: It ain't too much fun. (laugh) A lot of them come there ...they don't care if you dance or not... they don't wanna learn to dance, they just wanna talk and walk around... have fun. Some of them were kind of fun. (laugh) Sort of semi-elderly ladies who had plenty of money and they bought a lifetime course.

L: Lifetime.

J: That gave them some kind of two or three lessons a week plus they get to

go to all of the parties... .all the out of town things and they got money and they travel around with this teacher. (laugh) so a couple of them were sort of arhythmical..but they didn't care... they just. I enjoyed some of them... chit chat.. I only did that for about 5 or 6 months. I was digging it and then one day it just I had enough of it...6 or 7 hours a day... after that for a long time.

L: What did you dad do? Was he in music too?

J: He was the choir director at the Baptist church. But during the day he worked at a jewelry store.

L: Your mother stayed like a regular housewife? Did she work?

J: Yeah... she kept house and read 8 books every two weeks ... she'd go to the library every week and get eight books.

L: Eight books?

J: Check out 8 books. She had two cards. Two weeks later she'd go back to the library and check them in and get eight more.

L: What kind of stuff did she read?

J: I don't know... all of P.G. Wodehouse...you know novels..all fiction.

I don't know what she read. She didn't seem to be bored. When she wasn't cooking or something, she'd be reading.

L: Is that why you don't wanna read anything?... too many books around when you were little?

J: No, I just ain't interested that much in anything I don't already know.

I got enough to keep me occupied. If it's something I'm reall interested in at the time... if it ain't too long..reading ...I have to get as absorbed in that as I do to write a song or something. It's too intense. It's straps you. The TV you can walk off and leave it and keeps going, but reading, you put the book down and you gotta come right back to it.

L: Was your family pretty religious?

J: Yeah, very.

L: Go to church every Sunday and Wednesday...

J: Sunday night...

L: Sunday night...

J: And Thursday was choir rehearsal. One time my father, he was being choir director at the Baptist church and the Methodist church both which was bad... the Methodist church was just like over there... a little bit farther away ... and they were all ...there was a lot of intercourse between the two churches ... always. There was always a lot of people visiting back and forth but for a while there my old man was directing choir at both churches.... for free, you know.. (laugh) But he ...I don't think he did the choir practice for the Methodist church and then somebody else had to do it Sunday morning. They had it the nights that the Boy Scout troop met out behind the Methodist church. And there was a time when we got into taking off everybody's britches throwing them in trees and stuff.. you know the younger cats ... my Boy Scout troop was more sort of a free for all. No one was dedicated to anything.

L: No merit badges ...

J: Nobody ever got a merit badge. Me and Herb Burnette were the only ones who ever ascended to first class scouts. I did get a merit badge I think. one or two.. I think I got one in hiking. Me and Herb went on a 14 mile hike. I may have had one in swimming but it was more like party oriented ... and Friday night we'd get out there at a little meeting and some refreshments and play hide and seek and anyway one time we'd get somebody's britches off and I took them and heaved them right up in the middle of the church there see.

L: While choir practice was going on?

J: Yeah, my father was directing the choir and the scoutmaster saw me and made me walk in there and pick them up. My old man's looking at me and all the people.

L: So what was the upshot of that?

J: Well, I don't remember (laugh)

L: Were these like no drinking, smoking, dancing Baptists?

J: That didn't seem to bother them too much at that time ... me working at Arthur Murray.

L: What did they think of your music career?

J: They never thought I'd make any money at it.

L: So they just like wanted you to come home and get a good job?

J: Yeah, my father wanted me to be a dentist.

L: A dentist??? Why a dentist?

J: Because his father was a dentist and even though he blew all the money ... he made a lot. I don't know. His brother was a dentist.

L: Did dentistry appeal to you at all?

J: Not a bit. (laugh) I toyed with the idea of being a lawyer. That suited him okay. But I ...I didn't take college very seriously either. I was going to college at the wrong time. Ex-Marine in there with all them young ... there was one chick (MMMM)

L: Did you go at all? I mean to class or anything.

J: Oh, sure... I went for two or three years.

L: Oh, you did ... after you got back from Arthur Murray?

J: This was after Arthur Murray. I got tired of that and then what'd I do.

I drove a laundry route there for about 6 weeks ... cause I needed to make some money. Then I decided I'd go back to school on the GI bill. That's what I did. The GI bill and playing in Slim Wallace's band on Friday and Saturday night.

Slim Wallace was a truck driver who had a night club. He always had a night club somewhere. (laugh) He had one down there on Elvis Presley Blvd. And then he put one in over in Arkansas. I was going to college and building this house... already built the house. I kinda dug being a carpenter. I like to build.

L: Whose house was it?

J: It was one for me to live in.

L: Oh...

J: When I first got married there.

L: You got married after you were a dance instructor?.. .and college?

J: Yeah, somewhere in between..yeah I think I was in college when I got married. Going on the GI bill and playing these two nights.

L: Was your wife a coed or a musician?

J: No. She was a cook. (laugh) Kept care of the house. I built it on my father's property. He paid for the material and I did the work.

L: Did it come out okay?

J: Yeah. Pretty little house ... it's still there..It's a small 'house and all the studios I built up until the ones in Nashville I built myself... .most of the carpentry work. I built a big fine studio in Beaumont. Wish I had that room here.

L: How many tracks did that studio have?

J: Mono. I had a 3 track machine but we never had a board to go with it so I never had a three track hook up in Beaumont.

L: What was the name of that studio?

J: Gulf Coast Recording Studio. That's where we cut "Patches" and several other things.

L: What did you study in college?

J: Just about everything, except I didn't take any course in business ... or anything like that. I took English and physics and math and economic geography and European history and nutrition.

L: Nutrition?

J: Electricity ... music appreciation...

L: Did you think you were going to graduate?

J: No, I didn't plan on graduating. I was toying with the idea of being a lawyer sort of planned to graduate or do whatever I had to do to get to law school. But that didn't last long. I wasn't very interested in scholarly pursuits at that time. A few years prior to that I had been. I got about a year in while I was in the Marine Corps. I went to George Washington University. I took French and something else. I took some more psychology courses later. I took everything I wanted to take.

L: What were you interested in more than being in college?

J: I was getting interested in recording equipment then.

L: So you and this Slim, was the person?

J: Slim Wallace.

L: ... that was in the studio with you.

J: Yeah, he had this club on ...one night we were driving back and

I knew this disc jockey named Sleepy Eyed John..who had a tape recorder for sale.. Magnacorder..for $450 which I didn't have of course. Slim was the financier.. even after he had a million seller with "Tragedy", then he'd drive the truck... he finally retired. He wasn't gonna let that go.

L: Didn't wanna lose a sure thing.

J: Got the money and paid off his house and put him in a 4 track studio paid for ...but Slim was president of Fernwood Records. (laugh) He'd come into the office in the afternoon and after his run and take care of business. But prior to that , we were driving back from P one night ...Slim always did the driving... just break neck speed with a trailer on back ..90 miles an hour... good driver sometimes the lights went out.. didn't slow him down a bit (laugh). Anyway him and his wife were in the front seat and I was in the back seat stretched out...plotting ... they thought I was sleeping ... so I jumped up and said Slim and said Sleepy Eyed John's got a Magnacorder for $450. And if you put up the money, I'll do the building and your garage will turn into a little studio. I'll do it in my spare time, but I had plenty of spare time I was going to Memphis State. (laugh) So, he said okay and we built a little studio ... but I never finished it ... never got to put the mics in it ... we rehearsed in it we used (39) and then went down to WMPS. I think our investment in that session was about $40. That's the one that came out on Sun. We had it ready to press...we started Fernwood Records... master numbers and everything ... had the acetates. But they still have the F number rather than the S number...Fernwood.

L: You'd used the same stuff you'd already done.

J: Yeah, label copy and everything.

L: Why did you decide to take it to Sun?

J: To get it mastered. Sam was still doing acetate masters.

L: Oh, you got in there kind of the same way Elvis did.

J: Yeah, I came to rent his studio. He was still doing that...and he'd had Elvis and … and he was making a bunch of money but he was still an engineer. You could still get a $4 record.

L: Oh, he'd cut it himself?

J: Yeah. When I came there, guess who had to make all the $4 records. (laugh) and wedding tapes. For $12.50 I think it was, you could bring in your wedding tape which usually lasted about 45 minutes ... have to go through time and edit it and sometimes get it all on a record. You weren't supposed to put but 30 minutes on a record anyway, but you know ... that took two or three hours. You'd get that done at Sun studios for $12.50. This is after Elvis had already gone to RCA and had "Blue Suede Shoes" with Carl Perkins and a couple of million sellers there and "I Walk the Line" and a whole bunch of things. He wasn't doing a lot of it (laugh), but you could still go in there and hire Sam Phillips cut you a $4 record. He needed some help and I came along with this thing that he said that's the first thing that anybody brought in here that sounds like rock and roll to me. He liked the record. So it wound up he gave us a penny a record. I guess I still get a penny a record.

L: Did it do much good?

J: It sold about 20,000 or so.

L: So you and Slim Wallace just kind of disbanded?

J: Well, when I went to work for Sun, he went over to Fernwood and I got him together with this lawyer ... Buckaroo ...and they got together with Scotty Moore and they cut "Tragedy" over there at Hi Studios, but they didn't have any echo so they brought the tape over to me. Over at Hi and they'd bring them by Sun and I would run it;through and put a little tape back on it and hand it to them. All that record had on it was a guitar or a bass or something on it. I just put a little tape echo on the whole thing.

L: On "Tragedy" you said...

J: And they put it out and it was a hit seller.

L: Oh, I used to love that record. Still do.

J: It was a big hit.... so old Slim was making a bunch of money. Like I say ... paid off his house, built a studio.

L: Is that still in existence or...

J: The studio?

L: Fernwood Records?

J: No.

L: Then, you were in Memphis and Summer Records and this thing came up at RCA and they wanted you to go to New York.

J: That was while I was still over at Sun. I went up there see and Sam got wind of it and called up there and everything. I really went to relax. I was open to go somewhere else, but I wasn't particular ... that was a free trip to New York ... first class.

I don't know how Sam found out about it. He called Steve and all that stuff. When I got back he wasn't too friendly ...I wasn't gonna leave, I just went up there for the ride. Said I can go to work there if I want to, but I don't want to. Forget it. I don't think he ever forgot it.

L: Did he ever seem to regret selling Elvis to RCA?

d: There wasn't any visible signs of it ... particularly. He told me one time, if you're going to make a mistake, make a big one. (knock at the door) Come in.

X: Where's your tool box

J: It's in the basement. Over close to the heater ... on that...

L: by just doing the framing...

J: insulating...

L: When do you think that's going to be ready?

J: Month or so. month or two. I ain't in that big a hurry about it right now... just want to be on schedule.

L: So Sam got wind of the fact that you'd done this thing with RCA and things got a little rocky from then on?

J: Not vastly. It just sort of hurt his feelings without thinking about it. But I wasn't particularly thinking about leaving him. I just wanted to go to New York. (laugh)

L: Why did you not go to RCA after leaving Sun instead of the doing the Summer records.

J: I figured I could make a million dollars at Summer Records with "Motorcycle Michael".

L: Who wrote that song?

J: Me and a couple other guys.

L: So after that didn't make a million, you called up Chet or something?

J: Let's see ...was a Thursday get together, after that we did it that way everytime. It worked the first time and Charlie couldn't argue with it. I mean you know, we cut a million seller single, the next day after we did this the first time.

L: Were you still producing him then?

J: Yeah ... he was at his peak then. I had a studio and a band and they got together every Thursday and we'd break for an hour at lunch I had 3 sessions set, but I found out after the second one forget it.

C: Sam's secretary came back in the control room and said there's a guy out here says he plays the piano like Chet Atkins. Well, all right. I was a Chet Atkins fan, and I wanted to hear that. I said, "sure, send him back." So, Jerry Lee came back, and sure enough, he played something like Chet on the piano. I said, "'..hat else you do?" He said, "I play mostly country." At that time he was playing in a little ole place in Ferriday, Louisiana. He would play the piano with his left hand, and the drums with his right hand, and he had another guy playing bass with him, or something, and that was it. Now, I never heard that group. (laughs) But he really wasn't into rock and roll. But he could really just flat sing country stuff "Seasons of My Heart" -- a couple of other George Jones things, and that was about the only country stuff . . . country was not selling hardly during that period of time, just a few things.

L: Was this during that time when the Opry was really going down hill .

J: Yeah. Everybody was in there rocking and rolling, rockabilly, whatever they called it. But I made this little tape of just Jerry and the piano doing "Seasons Of My Heart" and a couple of other things, and that's what I played for Sam later. But I told Jerry, why don't he go home and learn some rock and roll songs.

L: Did he play country with the kind of energy that he later played rockabilly?

J: Pretty much, yeah. Oh yeah, it was definitely energetic. I played that tape for a lot of people, and they loved it. But anyway, I made that tape and played it for Sam later. I think Jerry left town that day. And Sam flipped over it. He said, "You should have signed him. Call him up." Which we were going to do. But about three weeks

later, he walked in anyway. Sam said, "I've been looking for you." Jerry had started growing a little goatee, and I talked him into shaving that pretty quick. This was like on a Tuesday that he came back in, I think. So, I asked him would he come back Thursday, and we'd get some players in and do an audition tape. So that's what happened.

Now, Sam was over at the disc jockey convention in Nashville. It was on a Thursday, I remember that and the heat kept going out - it was cold. And the circuit breaker kept going off while I was trying to record. But we managed to get "Crazy Arms" and three other things. Well, he had gone back and written a thing called "End of the Road," but the thing I really liked was . . . he had worked up a kind of rock and roll version of an old Gene Autry song called "Your The Only Star in My Blue Heaven," which was always waltz time. (Clement starts singing smoothly, "Yoouurr the only starr in my blue heaaaven . . . .") Jerry did its (Clement starts pounding on the table like its a piano) "Your the only start in my blue heaaaaaa ... vunnn And (thump, thump) you're shining (thump, thump) just for meeeeee" We did that and "End of the Road" and something else, and then I said, "You know 'Crazy Arms'?" He said, "I know a little of it." So we just cut it, and he made up some of the words.

Sam came back from Nashville, and we got in there . . you know, I'd cut the tapes and when he'd come in, I'd play him things I'd cut, and he'd pick what he wanted to put out. By then, see, I think it was a case where we hadn't played the song back. I think it was the last song we did. But, before the day was over, we were playing … hose first four things all came out … that first day. But we got to playing the tapes over and over, and we finally got to "Crazy Arms" and that would be the one we'd play over and over and over before the day was out. And then Sam came back. By that time I'd decided that would be the first one I'd play him. So, I put the tape on the machine, and had it queued up, and he came back to the control room, and I hit the start button; and it really didn't even get to the singing part before he stopped it and said, "I can sell that." Just from the intro. It was nothing but a piano and a drum! Didn't even have a bass on it. The bass player was in the bathroom at the time.

L: Who was playing drums?

J: I think it was J. M. Van Eaton.. . . So, anyway, we made a dub that day on the Presto right there