Jack Henderson Clement (born April 5, 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American singer, songwriter, and a record and film producer.
Raised and educated in Memphis, Jack Clement was performing at an early age. In 1953, he made his first record for the Sheraton label in Boston, Massachusetts but did not immediately pursue a full time career in music, instead choosing to study at Memphis State University from 1953 to 1955. Nicknamed ‘Cowboy’ Jack Clement, during his student days he played steel guitar with a local band, and in 1956 became part of one of the seminal events in rock and roll history when he went to work as a producer and engineer for Sam Phillips at Sun Records.
There, Clement worked with future stars such as Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. But most importantly, he discovered and recorded Jerry Lee Lewis while Sam Phillips was away on a trip to Florida (one of those recordings,“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” was selected in 2005 for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress). In 1957, Clement wrote the song “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” that became a crossover hit for Johnny Cash.
Another Cash hit written by Clement was “Guess Things Happen That Way”, which was # 1 country and # 11 pop in 1958. Clement performed the song on the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute show on CMT in November 2003.
