John Clay, whose unique musical vision reflected a vicious honesty tempered only by his darkly innocent sense of humor, is dead at 74.
John Clay performs on the UT-Austin campus in 1965 at a rally for Gary Thiher, SDS candidate for student body president. Photo by Jim McCulloch.
AUSTIN — Austin lost its most unique and unforgettable voice when John Clay died Wednesday, December 17, 2014, at the age of 74. Intense, direct and fiercely distinct, with a vicious honesty that was tempered only by his darkly innocent sense of humor, John had an innate ability to capture so much of life in such a very few words even though many of his songs, like “West Texas Memories,” were notorious for length.
Epic numbers like that brought listeners along for a seemingly endless ride through the flatlands of memory that in the end turned out to be over much too soon. Some, like “Mr. Bowly’s Still” or “The Meter Reader” were deliciously compact vignettes, like Thurber with a southern accent, or cummings with capitalization, set to music.
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