Guy Clark
Guy Clark
Guy Charles Clark (November 6, 1941 – May 17, 2016) was an American country singer-songwriter and luthier. He released more than 20 albums, and his songs have been recorded by other artists, including Townes Van Zandt, Bobby Bare, Jerry Jeff Walker, George Strait, Jimmy Buffett, Kathy Mattea, Lyle Lovett, Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Nanci Griffith and Chris Stapleton. He won the (/wiki/56thAnnualGrammyAwards) Grammy Award for Best Folk Album: My Favorite Picture of You.
Career
Clark was born in Monahans, Texas. His family moved to Rockport, Texas in 1954. After he graduated from high school in 1960, he spent almost a decade living in Houston as part of the folk music revival in that city. His wife Susanna Talley Clark and he eventually settled in Nashville, where he helped create the Americana) genre. His songs "L.A. Freeway" and "Desperados Waiting for a Train" helped launch his career and were covered by numerous performers, including Steve Earle, Jerry Jeff Walker, Nanci Griffith, and Brian Joens. The New York Times described him in its obituary as "a king of the Texas troubadours", declaring his body of work "as indelible as that of anyone working in the Americana idiom in the last decades of the 20th century".
Career
Clark had been a mentor to such other singers as Noel McKay, Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell. He organized Earle's first job as a writer in Nashville. In the 1970s, the Clarks' home in Nashville was an open house for songwriters and musicians, and it features in the film Heartworn Highways, an evocation of the songwriter scene in Nashville at that time.
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