Born Howard Gerald Clower in Liberty on September 28, 1926, and raised on a nearby farm, Jerry Clower first hoped to become an agricultural extension agent working with 4-H clubs, and after service in the U.S. Navy during World War II he attended Mississippi State University on a football scholarship, earned a degree in agriculture, became a 4-H agent, and then spent eighteen years beginning in 1954 selling fertilizer for Mississippi Chemical Corporation. His colorful, observant comic stories of southern life, drawn from his own experience and that of friends in Amite County, became both a successful sales tool and a popular feature at industry conventions. In 1970, while he was telling some of these tales at a Texas Tech fertilizer industry panel, including the story about the treed raccoon and raccoon hunter that later made him famous, local radio director Big Ed Wilkes recorded the conference. Wilkes issued Clower's monologue the following year on the local Lemon label and later sent the recording to MCA Records, which signed him. The resulting album, Jerry Clower from Yazoo City, Mississippi Talkin', remained on the country charts for thirty weeks, and at age 45 he entered a professional career as a country comedian. He went on to produce more than two dozen hit albums, joined Nashville's Grand Ole Opry in 1973, and for more than twenty-five years became one of its leading comedy attractions while also appearing widely in television commercials and broadcasts. His deep Christian commitment shaped his storytelling, his twenty-year involvement with the Southern Baptist Convention program Country Crossroads, his work as a lay minister, and his memoir Ain't God Good. He wrote four bestselling books, and Willie Morris praised his comic art for expressing the richness of the spoken language of the American South. Married to Homerline Wells Clower for fifty-one years and father of one son, Ray, and three daughters, Amy, Sue, and Katy, he died in 1998 following heart bypass surgery.
