Mr. Clark and wife Susanna were often in the 1970s company of Van Zandt, who wrote his own classic, "If I Needed You," in the spare bedroom of the Clarks' home on Chapel Avenue in East Nashville.

"Townes Van Zandt is one of the reasons I started writing songs," Mr. Clark told musicologist Ben Sandmel in 1992. "He writes serious, he writes seriously funny. But he never rhymes moon-june-spoon to make a buck. It's more of a literary approach. His work is a great yardstick. He consistently keeps me honest."

Peter Cooper The Tennessean 17 May 2016