DESCRIPTION:
This Mickey Newbury recording comes from his 1973 album, Heaven Help The Child. Cortelia Clark was a blind folk-blues singer who performed on the streets of Nashville at the corner of Church and Union, where he also sold shopping bags. This is where Mickey met him. A student from Vanderbilt University, Mike Weesner, made a recording of Cortelia, which later came to the attention of Felton Jarvis, who was Elvis Presley's record producer for RCA at the time. Jarvis convinced RCA to make a street recording of Cortelia Clark. The subsequent album, "Blues In The Street," sold very few copies, but Jarvis submitted it to the Recording Academy in the folk category, and Cortelia Clark won a 1966 Grammy Award for his album. Mickey Newbury wrote the song after learning of Cortelia's death. "In Nashville, there was an old man there I used to go and listen to all the time. He was really a great old guy. I was in San Francisco... and I got back home, picked up all the newspapers and went inside, started reading through them. Found 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..."

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