Jerry Clower was born in Amite County, Mississippi. He grew up fatherless in during the Depression in rural Mississippi, and could have easily given up on life. However, he dreamed of a career in agriculture, and his ambition was to be a 4-H club agent. So, after high school and a stint in the Navy, he went to Southwest Mississippi Junior College and Mississippi State on football scholarships. After college he started on his agricultural career with a job as assistant county agent in Oxford, and after two years he was hired by a fertilizer company in Yazoo City as a public relations person.
In talking to farmers, he found he was more successful when he told stories than when he talked about fertilizer. A friend taped one of his talks and sent it MCA Records, and MCA released "Jerry Clower From Yazoo City, Mississippi Talkin'" in 1970. He stayed with the same record company for an amazing 28 years.
Clower's accomplishments were many and varied. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1973 and regularly performed there. His hectic schedule usually included 200 performances a year across America. He was co-host of the ``Country Crossroads'' cable TV show on the ACTS channel and, earlier, for six years was co-host of the ``Nashville on the Road'' syndicated TV program with singer Jim Ed Brown.
Clower wrote four best-selling books: Ain't God Good, Let the Hammer Down, Life Everlaughter and Stories From Home.
Three of his albums---"Greatest Hits," "Mouth Of The Mississippi" and "From Yazoo City, Mississippi,Talkin'"---have been certified gold for sales of more than 500,000. He sold seven million albums during his life time and had a new album--his 26th--scheduled for release two months after his untimely death.
A documentary film about him, "Ain't God Good," won an award from the New York International Film Festival in the category of Ethics and Religion. Mississippi College bestowed an honorary doctorate on him.
This 275 lb. giant of a man became internationally known as a humorist who relied more on his delivery than the punchline for laughs. He often said that the key to his longevity was that, "I ain't never made an album you can't play in church." Many of his stories actually took place, but he had a gift for embellishment. ``I don't tell funny stories, I tell stories funny,'' he said.
Indeed, it was the good-hearted feeling underlying Clower's humor that endeared him to audiences of all ages. He introduced the world to the foibles of the Ledbetter clan, including Marcel and Uncle Versey Ledbetter and the other colorful characters in his story bag. His stories-told-funny were about things he knew--his friends, relatives and even himself. They were set in the rich southern culture that Jerry himself lived. Church revivals, county fairs, coon hunting, and cotton farming.
A lifelong resident of Mississippi, Jerry (he pronounced his name "JAY'ree") and Homerline, his wife of 51 years, lived for the last decade of his life in the small town of Liberty, Mississippi. He thus lived just a mile from where he grew up, where he was saved, where he was baptized, where he was married and where he was buried.
On August 4, 1998, Clower canceled his first show in 32 years, when he complained of exhaustion before a performance at the Georgia Mountain Fair in Hiawassee, Ga. At the age of 71, he underwent heart bypass surgery in a Mississippi hospital on Thursday, August 20, 1998. He had six bypasses performed during a four-hour operation. Doctors initially said his prognosis was good and he might be able to return to his Liberty, Miss., home in a few days.
That was not to be. Clower died of cardiorespiratory arrest at Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., five days after he underwent six heart bypasses.
The world stage has lost a wonderful storyteller. And the human race has lost a generous, people-loving and God-fearing person. It is our loss and heaven's gain.
Perhaps Jerry Clower himself said it best: ""I am convinced that there is only one place where there is no laughter and that's hell. I have made arrangements to miss hell. Praise God. I won't ever have to be anywhere that there ain't no laughter."
We hope to be able to secure permission to post several of Jerry's best stories on this site in the near future.