The Godfather of the South

by Christopher Paschal

I never met Clisby Clarke. He passed away when I was a freshman in college. In fact, it wasn’t until I was a senior at Wofford that I even heard of the legendary Georgian. And like most great stories, our meeting starts with me being a horrible student.

I was sitting in the library, not studying, but instead watching old SEC football highlights on YouTube. Among the suggested videos on the right side of my computer screen was something called “Bulldog Bite” by Clisby Clarke. I don’t even think I meant to click on it, but somehow it started playing, and before you knew it, I was grinning and tapping my feet along to the song.

“Who the hell is this guy?” I remember thinking. After listening to the song a few more times, followed by a quick Google search, I knew this was my kind of guy. Clisby instantly became my friend. You read that right. Clisby, a man I never met, is my friend. And I believe a lot of people would second my feelings. Described by many who were close to him as having a “larger-than-life personality,” Clisby is an important character in Southern history. One of his colleagues referred to him at a dinner party as “The Godfather of the South.”

But for all of y’all who don’t know who Clisby Clarke is, a simple Google search isn’t going to tell you the whole story. To get the whole story, you have to understand who this Southern gentleman was and who he was not.

Clisby Clarke was not a professional musician. He was not a celebrity. He was not walking the red carpets of Hollywood. Clisby Clarke was a family man who grew up in small-town South Georgia, not far from Macon. Unlike some famous SEC fans like Ashley Judd or Bill Clinton, Clisby was one of the guys. Which is what makes him even more relatable and more endearing.

Who is Clisby Clarke?

Clisby travelled close to a hundred miles north for college. He attended the University of Georgia in the early 1960s after a brief one-year stint at Georgia Tech. (Hey, sometimes you have to experience things on the other side to truly appreciate where you are meant to be.) Clisby took a big Bulldog bite out of his time in Athens. When I asked Katherine Buckner, Clisby’s daughter, about his college experience, her description was one that I could easily relate to. “My dad loved Georgia as much as anyone,” Katherine recalled.  “Not only the football team, but the school and the guidance he received. He was an active member of the SAE fraternity, and met many of his life-long friends as a result.”

Clisby was good at making friends, a skill that was not lost on one of his professors. With a degree in advertising, one of Clisby’s professors advised him to go to graduate school and study marketing. Many people would be grateful to that professor for that moment of wisdom. With a graduate degree and a firm handshake, Clisby was ready to take on the world. And he would make his mark in his home state of Georgia at McCann-Erickson.

“The best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty,” Brian Wallace told me. Brian worked with Clisby for years at McCann-Erickson. And he knows what made Clisby so good. “He could hold a room in his hand. Remarkable presence in the room. He was good because he could connect with most anyone in the room and cut through marketing jargon to distill a complicated message into one that anyone could understand, and do it in a very compelling way.”

Nothing threw Clisby off, either. He knew how to keep a straight face and give a presentation even in less-than-ideal circumstances.  “Clisby was not extremely technically savvy,” said Brian, “and I helped him through technical issues occasionally. One particular offsite presentation, we couldn’t get the slide presentation to advance with the remote properly, so I gave him a dummy clicker and when I heard him click, I would manually advance the presentation from the laptop.”

A Masterful Musician

Clisby loved music. And not in the way that you or I love music. Music was within Clisby. He was “musically brilliant – at least his ear was,” Katherine told me. His favorite music was rhythm and blues. The kind of music that comes from the soul. Katherine told me that his musical idols were two men who also couldn’t read music:  Ray Charles, who obviously could not read music (but had perfect pitch), and Errol Garner, the renowned jazz pianist.  (He also loved James Brown and Randy Newman and The Doobie Brothers.) If you played with soul, you were Clisby’s type of musician. And when Clisby was playing, he played with that same kind of soul. He was an entertainer who could fill a room with music.

Clisby’s ability to capture a room was on full display during a great American celebration a couple of decades ago. According to Brian, “He had an extensive musical library in his head. Legend goes that he sat down at a piano in 1976 in Philadelphia at the bicentennial celebration on the night of July 3^rd and played all night long until the parade began and never played the same song twice.”

Georgia Comes Calling

The year is 1980 and the Bulldogs have their best football team in decades. Not only that, but the top freshman running back in the entire country is putting on the red and black in the fall. His name is Herschel Walker. The fans are excited, the team is excited, and the University realizes it needs a song all Bulldogs can rally around. Naturally, there is only one man for the job. Who better to write the song than a man who could capture a room pounding on the piano and then turn around and sell anything to anyone? “Bob Argo, an old friend of Daddy’s from Athens and president of the Bulldog Club, approached him about a new fight song for Georgia,” Katherine told me. Clisby, despite never writing a song on this scale, agrees to help. “Bulldog Bite” is born.

“Hunker down Hairy Dawgs, hunker down for a fight,” Clisby sang with a choir answering each lyric as if he were preaching from a pulpit. It was a hit. Georgia fans loved it and played it on their way to a national title. In fact, the song was so popular, long-time Bulldog radio announcer Larry Munson used the phrase “hunker down” when referring to the Bulldog football players in crucial moments. And how about the long-time Georgia mascot, Hairy Dawg? Tom Sapp, the creator of Hairy Dawg offered a few thoughts: “His success with ‘Hunker Down Hairy Dawg’ and ‘Bulldog Bite’ allowed me to get the idea for Hairy Dawg to Coach Dooley. Next year will be his 40th year as the mascot. Thanks in a large part to Clisby being the ultimate Bulldog fan and friend.”

Clisby didn’t receive credit for that line and didn’t receive a single cent from the University for writing the song. He didn’t care. He never complained. He had too much respect for the University. He was thankful for everything Georgia had done for him.

Not only did he not complain, but the following year he wrote another song, “Let the Big Dog Eat,” which is an even better song, in my opinion. Katherine agrees with me. “It’s more Clisby.”

 At the beginning of this piece, I said Clisby Clarke wasn’t a Hollywood star. Instead, he was a part of Southern royalty. Vince Dooley, Johnny Isakson, Saxby Chambliss, Truett Cathy, Billy Payne, Lewis Grizzard, and so many other great Georgians admired and had great respect for Clisby. So why do so many other Southerners not know of him? Because while he did so many great and amazing things, he was still one of us. Katherine told me, “The sun dimmed a little bit, for me, the day he died.  He loved God (not church so much), his wife, his girls, my sister Caroline, and his entire family.  He was hilarious, loving, intelligent – he goes down in my book, and so many others, as a great Georgian and American.  He loved his country, city, state, and most of the people in it.”

In many ways, we all know a Clisby Clarke, but in even more ways there will never be another Clisby Clarke. Rest in Peace, Clisby. I look forward to the day I reach those pearly gates and I finally meet the Godfather of the South as he pounds away at that piano, cheering on the Dawgs.