JerryClower

Publications

Books:

Ain’t God Good! Waco, Texas: Word Books,
1975; New York: Pocket Books, 1977.
Let the Hammer Down!. Waco, Texas: Word
Books, 1978; New York: Pocket Books, 1979.
Life Everlaughter: The Heart and Humor of
Jerry Clower. Nashville, Tenn.: Rutledge Hill
Press, 1987.
Stories from Home. Foreword by Willie Morris.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
Recordings

Comedy Albums:

From Yazoo City, Mississippi Talkin’. MCA,
1971; 1973.
Mouth of Mississippi. UNI/MCA, 1972
Clower Power. MCA, 1973
Country Ham. MCA, 1974
Greatest Hits. UNI/MCA, 1974.
Live in Picayune. UNI/MCA, 1975
The Ambassador of Goodwill. MCA, 1976.
On The Road. UNI/MCA, 1977
Live from the Stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
UNI/MCA, 1978; 1983.
Ledbetter Olympics! MCA, 1980
An Officer and a Ledbetter. UNI/MCA, 1980
More Good ’Uns. MCA, 1981; 1995.
Dogs I Have Known. UNI/MCA, 1982
Starke Raving! MCA, 1983
Live at Cleburne Texas. UNI/MCA, 1983
The One and Only. MCA, 1983.
Runaway Truck, MCA, 1986.
Top Gum, 1987.
Classic Clower , UNI/MCA, 1988.
Let There Be Light. UNI/MCA, 1989.
Mouth of the Mighty Mississip’. UNI/MCA, 1990.
Racoonteur. UNI/MCA, 1991
Sidewinder, MCA, 1992.
Spend an Hour with Clower, MCA, 1993.
Stories Told Funny, MCA, 1993.
Jerry Joins the Navy. UNI/MCA, 1994.
Fish’n, Frogs, Hawgs, ’n Dawgs.
UNI/Radioactive, 1995.
Live from Dollywood. UNI/MCA, 1997.
(Available May 13, 97)

Videos:

Live, Vol. 1. MCA, 1990.
Live, Vol. 2. MCA, 1990.
On the Stage with Jerry Clower. MCA, 1993.

-He was a true American and will be sorely missed.

Mr. Jerry Clower was born September 28, 1926 in Liberty, Mississippi. The day after
he finished high school, Clower joined the Navy and served on the aircraft carrier
Bennington in the Pacific during WWII. When he returned to Mississippi after the war,
he attended college on football scholarships at Southwest Mississippi Junior College and
Mississippi State University, where he received a degree in agriculture.

Serving as an assistant county agent in Oxford, Mississippi, for a couple of years,
Clower maintained his close ties with the soil by taking a job in Yazoo City as a
fertilizer salesman for the Mississippi Chemical Corporation, a manufacturer of chemical
plant foods. He stayed for 18 years and eventually rose to the position of director of
field services. In the process of making sales, he began telling prospective customers
humorous stories about his childhood to improve sales. Eventually, a friend taped one of
these sessions and sent it to MCA records in Nashville, TN. The result was his first
comedy album, "Jerry Clower from Yazoo City, Mississippi Talkin" in 19700. Within a
month, the album had achieved gold status, selling more than 500,000 copies.

Clower first appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in 1973 and continued to tour extensively
and record. A staple of his comedy is the Ledbetter clan, a fictional family whose
humorous antics are more than funny: they chronicle life in the rural South of the 20th
century. Undergirding his comedy was Clower's strong religious beliefs as a Southern
Baptist. He served as a lay minister and deacon in his hometown church and has hosted a
Christian radio and syndicated TV shows. Clower married the former Homerline Wells,
his childhood sweethaeart and had four children.

In addition to his live performances, Clower has also published four best-selling books.
"Ain't God Good" came out in 1975 and was the basis and title for a documentary film
which won an award from the New York International Film Festival in the category of
Ethics and Religion. It was followed by, "Let the Hammer Down!" in 1979 and "Life
Everlaughter" in 1987. In 1992, came the collection of his best tales and a serious look
at the man behind the persona.

Fellow Mississippian and writer, Willie Morris, wrote that "Clower's comic art
demonstrates the richness of the spoken language of the Deep South in all its inwardness,
nuance and sweep of the extravagant country talk, as lyrical as much of the southern
literature, and in the lineal ancestry of southern writing." He concluded that Jerry
Clower's humor is "...rooted in a region, but is not regional. Laughter is the force that
connects people from all regions in his work of art."

Clower died in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 24, 1998, five days after undergoing
heart bypass surgery. He was 71 years of age.

(Article updated by Yoshiko Kayano)