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Back in Yazoo City!
Some of my "thangs" are on display in the
Triangle! |
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The
Triangle Cultural Center in downtown Yazoo City
invites you to come by and see our display of
Jerry Clower memorabilia. Jerry got his start
right here - JERRY CLOWER FROM YAZOO CITY, MISSISSIPPI,
TALKING - telling funny stories. He went on to
much bigger places, but kept his Yazoo City connections.
We're proud of what he has accomplished, and are
glad that we are able to share and show some of
his best and most notable awards and rewards.
The
museum is located at:
Triangle Cultural Center
333 North Main Street
Yazoo City, MS 39194
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He
was born September 28, 1926, in Liberty, Mississippi.
The day after he finished high school, he joined the
Navy and served on the aircraft carrier Bennington in
the Pacific during World War II. 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.
He served as an assistant county agent for a couple
of years. Then, maintaining his close ties with the
soil, he took a job in Yazoo City as a fertilizer salesman
for the Mississippi Chemical Corporation, a manufacturer
of chemical plant foods, where 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
his talks and sent it to MCA Records in Nashville. The
result was his first comedy album in 1970, Jerry Clower
from Yazoo City, Mississippi Talkin'. Within a month,
the album had achieved gold status, selling more than
500,000 copies.
He 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 is Clower's strong religious beliefs. A Southern
Baptist, Clower has served as a lay minister and as
a deacon in his hometown church, and he has hosted a
Christian radio show and syndicated television show.
He is married to the former Homerline Wells, his childhood
sweetheart, and they have 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, the University Press
of Mississippi published his most recent book, Stories
from Home, a collection of his best tales and a serious
look at the man behind the persona.
In the foreword to Stories from Home, fellow Mississippi
writer Willie Morris wrote that Clower's comic art demonstrates
the richness of the spoken language of the South "in
all its inwardness and nuance and sweep — the
extravagant country talk, as lyrical as much of southern
literature, and in the lineal ancestry of southern writing."
He concludes 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 old.
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