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Clark Clifford, Musician is an independent publication launched in June 2026 by Clark Clifford. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. The Newbasstone content at the top is an archive of the now defunct Newbasstone, Inc., in case you're interested. Here's an interview to check out:

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In 1979, Clark Clifford came drifting back to Pittsburgh after Berklee, bringing home the kind of dreams musicians bring back with them—still hot, still uncertain, still vulnerable to the first hard wind. Around him was an older world, the old show-business world, because his great uncle, Charlie Shaffer, had been through it when entertainment still had greasepaint on its hands and danger in its smile. Charlie had been one of the big names in vaudeville with Joe Bonomo, and then he went to work in pictures. His first day in the movies was the sort of thing they don’t teach you in school: jumping off a train going 50 miles an hour, fourteen times, for $100 a jump. That tells you something right there about the era, the nerve of it, the madness of it, the appetite.

Charlie went on to star in The Rough Riders in 1929 and later worked as a stunt double for Gene Autry at Republic Pictures. And before John Wayne was really John Wayne at Republic, Charlie was riding him to work every day in his Cord, which is the kind of detail that makes the whole thing feel half-Hollywood, half-folklore. He understood the business from the inside, and he knew that if you had the right introduction, maybe the door would open just enough to get your foot in.

So he put Clark onto Sid Marke, his old vaudeville agent, who had been in Rudolf Valentino's troup, and who had also helped make songwriter Sandy Mason, the woman behind “Our Love,” the Crystal Gayle hit that went to number one near this time. Alan Reynolds was part of it too, and suddenly the whole thing had that familiar music-business feel—hope, leverage, and a little too much polish. It looked like a path.

Clark took the meeting and did what musicians do when they still believe the sound can carry the day. He put a band together with a guitarist who had worked with Neil Young and Jeremy Steig in New York in the 1960s, and he planned to bring in Brazilian musicians he had met at Berklee once things got moving. David Cane (Sugar Cane) of Van Harris and the Vanguards fame was there, too, and his Jouliard background made for a pleasant boost in the scene. Steve Romanelli, Tom Jones' sax player and Harold Smoiar, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Oboist played on the first demo, "Skye". "Movin' On" was the other song on the demo with just the rhythm section playing on it. That was the music he heard—blues and jazz, with room to breathe, room to swing, room to go somewhere unexpected. But the agents wanted Top 40, the local machinery wanted something easy to book and easier to sell, and that’s where the trouble started.

The personalities clashed. The music didn’t fit the market. The courts got involved, and the cases were lost. In the end Clark was left on his own resources, which is where the story always gets honest. The dream is still there, but now it has to stand up without help.