Sanford Clark put Arizona on the rockabilly map in 1956 when he reached # 7 on the Billboard Top 100 with “The Fool”.
It was the first big hit of the rock ‘n’ roll era from Phoenix.
Clark died on Sunday, July 4th, in Joplin, Missouri, where he was undergoing cancer treatment and contracted COVID-19.
He was 85.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Clark was 9 years old when his family moved to Phoenix.
After serving in the Air Force in the South Pacific, he returned to Phoenix, where he met Lee Hazlewood, an aspiring record producer and songwriter who was also a DJ at KTYL in Mesa.
She introduced guitarist Al Casey, Clark’s school friend who played on countless Hazlewood recordings.
The making of “The Fool”
John Dixon, an Arizona music historian and DJ who became friends with Clark, recalls, “Lee was working on that song, ‘The Fool,’ and Al said, ‘I know a guy who could sing it.'”
Hazlewood had his own list of singers that he had used on his recording dates by then, including Jimmy Spellman.
But he thought this single needed someone new, so he took Casey’s word for it and got Clark to edit “The Fool” at Audio Recorders for the Phoenix label MCI in March 1956.
Rich Kienzle has created liner notes for several Clark collections at Bear Family Records, a German label specializing in re-editions of archive recordings.
“When you think back to the early days of Sanford, he recorded this single in a little hole-in-the-wall recording studio in Phoenix that looked more than a little like Sun Studio in Memphis,” Keinzle says of Memphis Recording Service, the home of Sun Records, where Elvis Presley made his first recordings.
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“The beginning of the Phoenix sound”
Clark’s first single is a swampy rockabilly classic bathed in Hall, with Casey delivering a boastful gem of a guitar riff that shares more than a touch of DNA with “Smokestack Lightning”.
“They basically took the guitar riff from ‘Smokestack Lightning’ and, like Al said, turned it upside down,” says Dixon.
“It was a very simple riff. But Lee knew, ‘OK, that’s a great sound.’ He was kind of a ringmaster who worked with all of these elements and Sanford’s voice was a big part of it. Lee knew what he wanted and ‘The Fool’ gave him the credibility that people would listen and say, ‘Hey, that guy can make a hit record. ‘”
When the song exploded much bigger than expected, MCI, which Dixon says was “basically a desk” on audio recorders, couldn’t keep up with demand.
So the little Phoenix label sold the master to Dot Records, where the single was remastered on the radio for maximum impact.
“If you listen to MCI ‘Fool’ and Dot ‘Fool’, some people even thought it was a different setting,” says Dixon. “The difference in sound is just amazing. The Dot release is so much hotter.”
The song sold more than a million copies and inspired covers by Johnny Burnette, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, Roger Miller, Elvis Presley, Robert Gordon and the Animals, to name a few.
“This is the beginning of the Phoenix sound, if you can call it that, establishing Lee as the songwriter and producer, Al as the player, Sanford as the singer, and the audio recorder as the studio,” says Dixon.
This single really took off two years later when Duane Eddy landed “Rebel-‘Rouser,” one of many instrumental classics featured on Eddy’s Phoenix-made calling card, Hazlewood-produced “Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will.” “. Travel.”
Dixon sees it this way: “All of the characters involved, for the most part – Lee, the studio, a lot of the musicians (Al and Corki Casey), it all started with ‘The Fool’ in 1956. I would call it the most important record ever made here.” It really was the beginning of the whole thing. “
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Some would argue in the name of “Rebel-‘Rouser” as the more important album, says Dixon.
“But I don’t necessarily know if Lee wouldn’t have had enough confidence to make this record, if there wasn’t ‘The Fool’. Suddenly he does what he always wanted – you no longer have to be a DJ to write songs and have them recorded. He moved to Hollywood in 1956 to work for Dot. “
Try to follow “The Fool”
Clark enjoyed a second small hit in 1956 with the film noir rockabilly flavor of “A Cheat”. (No. 74).
As Dixon says, “There was a lot of pressure on that second hit so you know … ‘The Fool’, ‘A Cheat’ you’re trying something similar but different to find that it’ll be a hit on its own, but ‘A Cheat’ really wasn’t the sequel everyone wanted. ”
Kienzle believes the timing that helped make “The Fool” a natural airplay hampered the singer’s chances of making the same impression even deeper into Presley’s reign with a second rockabilly single.
“This song actually had a lot of the mystery that ‘The Fool’ had, and Casey played really well,” he says.
“But at that time Elvis owned everything. And the other Sun artists – Perkins and Jerry Lee – came along and really started populating the field. So Sanford’s record had no chance of going anywhere. “
Although he continued to make good records, often with Hazlewood, “The Fool” would remain the singer’s only big hit.
“It’s just one of those records that have been tried and tested,” says Dixon. “And Sanford certainly made the final version.”
It was a promising start to a career that never really delivered on that promise – at least not commercially.
“Unfortunately, a number of circumstances, most of which did not originate with him, have left him unable to build momentum or follow-up to build on,” says Kienzle.
“One of the things that Sanford has in common with many rockabilly singers is that he made a name for himself with a single single.”
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“I just couldn’t get the second really big one”
When Kienzle interviewed the singer in 1985 for those liner notes, Clark said to him, “I just couldn’t come up with that second really big song in there.”
It wasn’t a lack of strong material, although, as Kienzle says, part of the problem may have been Dot Records’ Randy Wood trying his best to transform Clark into something of a second-string Pat Boone.
“So if you did something good,” he says, “it was despite Randy Wood.”
In 1985, Clark said he didn’t want to do the kind of music Wood had him record for Dot.
“But when you’re young and stupid, you really don’t know,” he said to Kienzle.
Among record collectors, unless you happen to come across an original press of “The Fool” on MCI, the most collectable Clark record is his last 45 on Dot, 1958 “Modern Romance,” which sounds a bit like Jerry Lee Channel Lewis.
And that song never made it to the charts.
“They didn’t encourage it,” says Dixon. “And it’s a shame because it’s a pretty strong song. It might have been a good second hit of his. But by then, Lee’s year as a producer at Dot was over. And he was looking for new ways to make his music.”
Keith Richards describes Clark in his autobiography “Life”, in which Rolling Stone looks back on his first appearance in a gym, when he and a musician friend were performing, as a “serious country singer, very similar to Johnny Cash”. The cowboy ballad Clark published “Son-of-a-Gun” in 1959.
Clark continued to make records throughout the 1960s, from the Ricky Nelson-worthy rockabilly ballad of “Go On Home” to the original version of Hazlewood’s “Houston,” a finger-pop ballad that became a hit with Dean Martin months later.
In 1966 he released a re-recording of “The Fool” with Waylon Jennings on guitar for Ramsey’s Ramco Records.
His first two albums came out in 1968 – a British compilation of his Ramco pages They Call Me Country and Return of the Fool on Hazlewood’s LHI Records.
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Shortly after these two albums were released, Clark retired from the music business to work in construction in the Payson area.
“I met him there for the first time in the early 1990s,” says Dixon. “He was a house builder up there.”
He also worked as a dealer in Vegas and rode 18-wheelers for a while while living in Louisiana.
“But between those other jobs, he went back to the studio and recorded,” says Dixon. “He later did some of his own sessions with some of the songs he wrote.”
In the 90s, Dixon accompanied Clark and Casey to a rockabilly weekend in Great Britain that also saw Hazlewood.
“It was really great,” says Dixon.
“The British have over the years valued rockabilly music of the early 50s and 60s more than we did. And so, like Northern Soul and other musical styles, have supported these acts.”
Clark knew most people only knew him for “The Fool,” but Dixon says he never let that bother him.
“I never felt like he had a grudge like some people do for not being famous,” says Dixon. “He seemed to be busy enough, he didn’t have to bother with it. He always had a backup plan.”
“I would love to do it again, but I would never go out and starve”
In 1985 the singer said to Kienzle: “I would love to do it again, but I would never starve to death on the streets. If I could get a record that charted and made a decent living, I would love it.” But what can you do? “
Clark told him that he would change things in his decisions, says Kienzle.
“At the same time, he said, ‘I’ve done well. I’ve made money all my life. I miss the business. I miss the limelight. But I can go to a bar and sing. I would never do it again.” unless I have another hit. ‘”
Clark leaves behind his wife Marsha and several children.
Dixon says a memorial is planned for Phoenix, where Clark will be buried in December.
“I spoke to Marsha this morning and she mentioned that she would like some kind of memorial like we did for Al,” says Dixon.
“So maybe we’ll do something where we put some bands together and celebrate Sanford’s life musically.”
Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.
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