Singer-songwriter

Born: November 6, 1941;

Died May 17, 2016

GUY Clark, who has died at the age of 74, was a Nashville songwriting sage who was admired by artists with bigger public profiles, including Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, and who wrote songs that became hits for Ricky Skaggs, Bobby Bare and Vince Gill as his work became part of the country music fabric.

Born in the small West Texas town of Monahans, Clark grew up to be the archetypal storytelling Texan singer-songwriter. He could capture the equivalent of a novel or screenplay in just a few verses and when his first album, Old No. 1, was released in 1975, the maturity of his writing was immediately apparent. It turned out that many of the songs had been sparked by experiences from his early years.

His grandmother, with whom Clark lived, ran the town hotel in Monahans and one of her residents, a venerable oil driller, featured in the classic Desperados Waiting for a Train. Another song, Texas 1947, which Johnny Cash later covered, depicted small town people stopping to observe an express train passing by – the daily local entertainment.

At the age of 16, Clark acquired his first guitar and began to learn Spanish folk songs. He moved to Rockport and then Houston, where he met his first wife, Susan, and fell in with legendary Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt.

With Van Zandt’s encouragement, Clark, who at the time was working in television by day and singing on the local folk scene by night, began writing songs. When his marriage broke up, Clark moved to San Francisco, where he met his second wife, Susanna, a poet and artist, and then to Los Angeles. Southern California’s lifestyle did not suit the couple, however, and they moved to Nashville, where Clark made contacts with publishers.

Jerry Jeff Walker, who had written Mr Bojangles, became the first singer to pick up on Clark’s songwriting, scoring a minor hit with LA Freeway, which charted Clark’s disaffection with Los Angeles. Presently the Clarks’ house became a gathering place for singers and songwriters including Rodney Crowell, who went on to co-write She’s Crazy for Leaving with Clark and produced Clark’s fourth album, The South Coast of Texas.

If Clark’s own recordings did not often inconvenience chart compilers, his albums proved to be rich sources for other artists. Bluegrass star Ricky Skaggs took Clark’s Heartbroke to Number 1. Bobby Bare had a top 20 hit with New Cut Road and country supergroup the Highwaymen – Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings – took Desperados Waiting for a Train into the top 20.

As a performer – he came to Scotland several times, including appearances on Transatlantic Sessions and at the Arches in Glasgow – Clark was an understated master. His voice was weathered and his performing style perfectly relayed the inherent sense of narrative that flowed through songs such as The Cape or Dublin Blues, where he gave bluegrass guitar picker Doc Watson parity with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo while expressing undying affection for a lost love.

He wrote these beautifully crafted songs for himself and if other singers thought they were good enough to sing, so be it. Trying to second guess what the big names in Nashville would want to sing did not interest him and when he had no ideas for songs to work on, he would go into his workshop and craft guitars instead – he had worked in the Dobro factory while living in California.

In the words of another singer-songwriter friend, Eric Taylor, Clark was the definitive Renaissance man. Taylor recalled when he and Clark were both living in Houston and learning blues guitar skills from Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb, he would visit Clark to find him performing major surgery on a vintage guitar on the kitchen table. The next time, the “patient” would be a car engine. At school Clark had excelled at science and art, starred in the debating team, and performed outstandingly well in football, basketball and track and field. So he was always an all-rounder.

His musical and wordsmith talents were recognised with the Poets Award from the Academy of Country Music in 2012 and his induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame the same year. He won a Best Folk Album Grammy for his final recording, My Favourite Picture of You in 2014 and a tribute double album, This One’s for Him, featuring a cast including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Rosanne Cash and John Prine singing Clark’s songs, won the Americana Awards’ Album of the Year title in 2012.

He is survived by his son from his first marriage, Travis. His second wife, Susanna, predeceased him in 2012.

ROB ADAMS