Down On The Corner

By Paul Moffett

July was dominated by the passing of Mickey Clark, at least among those musicians who knew him. His obituary is below.

It being summer and all, the festival season is in full roar, with multiple events happening most weekends, usually involving music. August will continue the parade, with the Kentucky State Fair being but one of the many places to hear live music. Check the LMN calendar regularly.

Have a fine summer.

Codas

Clark, Mickey,78, award-winning singer, songwriter died in Louisville on July 15, 2018. He collaborated with many musicians, including John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kinky Friedman and Sam Bush plus many more Louisville and Nashville musicians. His songs were recorded by the Kingston Trio, Tompall and the Glaser Brothers, the Oak Ridge Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Glen Yarbrough and the Peter Yarrow-produced group, Jericho Harp.

More from his biography: Native Louisvillian Mickey Clark’s unlikely musical journey began in 1962, when he had just arrived as a first year grad student at Purdue and met a freshman from Chicago, Larry Foster, who played the 12-string guitar and was a talented singer/songwriter. They formed a duo and began playing gigs on campus and then added Ethan Kenning, becoming a trio, the Village Singers, and started playing coffee houses in Chicago, Florida and New York. Ethan left and formed the folk rock/psychedelic rock group, HP Lovecraft, and Larry and Mickey teamed up with Marita Crites, whom Larry later married, and formed the New Village Singers folk group in Dayton, Ohio. After signing a management agreement with Marty Erlichman, who managed Barbra Streisand, the group moved to New York in 1965 and became a successful folk rock group, The Three of Us. The group played the top folk clubs, recorded for Kapp Records, were guests on the Mike Douglas Show and did college concerts, but after Larry got drafted in 1966, the group disbanded. After a second attempt at a master’s degree at Indiana University, Mickey moved back to New York. In 1969, he married his wife, Sandy, and they moved to Nashville in late 1970, after Mickey signed a writer’s contract with the Glaser Brothers in Nashville.

While living in New York, Mickey had begun to play the national College Coffee House Circuit, both as a solo act and as a duo with Mickey White, and he continued playing college coffee houses and folk clubs after moving to Nashville. In 1974, the night before the Bob Dylan and The Band Tour 1974 Tour opened in Chicago, Bob Dylan heard Mickey perform with Mickey White at Chicago’s historic Earl of Old Town. When Bob Dylan was interviewed by Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres ten days later, Mickey was mentioned as a possible artist Dylan would like to sign to his Ashes and Sand label, a label that, unfortunately, never materialized. The full interview appears in the Rolling Stone book about that 1974 tour, “Knockin’ on Dylan’s Door.”

Mickey formed his Blue Norther band in 2009 and began playing locally and around the region, highlighted with a 2010 appearance at the prestigious Philadelphia Folk Festival. Featuring Tom Cunningham on fiddle and later, Jory Hutchens, on fiddle, Chip Bush (Sam Bush’s cousin) on mandolin, Dale Perry on guitar and Marty Miller on bass, their blend of roots music, country, alt country and originals is accentuated with great vocal harmonies.

Mickey’s follow up CD, “Reasons & Rhymes,” was co-produced by Mickey and Jim Rooney, released in June of 2014, and features the Blue Norther band along with special guests Michael Cleveland and Reggie Harris. The title song, “Reasons and Rhymes,” is a tribute to his wife, Sandy, and is his musical anthology of sorts. The record received an endorsement from the legendary Gordon Lightfoot, who had this to say about the record, “What a jim dandy album you have here! Great vocals, great songs, great lyrics, great arrangements. Good luck. Gordon.”