Career
Clark lost his sight after an operation in the mid-1950s, and began playing and singing blues songs on street corners in Nashville. He also sold shopping bags, on 5th Avenue between Church and Union Streets, among other locations. Around 1964, Mike Weesner, a student at Peabody College, made a demo tape of Clark at Globe Studio.
This came to the attention of Bob Ferguson and Chet Atkins of Radio Corporation of America Nashville.
Felton Jarvis, Elvis Presley"s producer, was enlisted to produce the album. In December 1965, Weesner and Jarvis persuaded Radio Corporation of America to record Clark on the sidewalk, complete with prominently featured (but overdubbed) street noises and interactions with city dwellers.
Clark performed both original songs and variations of familiar popular, country and blues tunes, including the Everly Brothers" hit "Bye Bye Love", Blind Boy Fuller"s "Truckin" My Blues Away", and "Walk Right In" as popularised by the Rooftop Singers. However, the success had little impact on Clark, who continued to perform on the streets and was never recorded again.
He died in 1969 in a house fire, after his kerosene heater exploded.
In 1973 singer/songwriter Mickey Newbury wrote and recorded a song, "Cortelia Clark", based on his knowledge of the real Clark, on the album Heaven Help the Child. Newbury said: "In Nashville..there was an old man there I used to go in and listen to all the time..he was really a great old guy. I was in San Francisco.
I got back home, picked up all of newspapers and went inside, started reading through them.
Foundation out he had burned to death in his trailer while I was gone. I don"t know how much it will mean ever to him, but this is a song I wrote about him." The song has subsequently been recorded by other artists including the Kingston Trio, and Josh White Junior., who released a 2000 album of the same title.
