Profiles of Jackson County: Gene Clark of The Byrds

The Byrds in 1965, with Gene Clark, second from left.

Today the Jackson County Historical Society honors Gene Clark, who grew up in the Raytown area before leaving Kansas City and helping to organize the Byrds, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s, before later becoming one of the pioneers of the popular music genre today known as “country rock” or Americana. 

Clark died 30 years ago, on May 24, 1991, in Sherman Oaks, California. 

Born in Tipton, Mo., near Jefferson City, in 1944, Harold Eugene Clark attended Raytown schools while growing up near Swope Park in Kansas City. His parents, Kelly and Jeanne Clark, reared 13 children on about 200 municipally-owned acres near the park, where Kelly maintained the golf course. 

In 1960 Gene Clark, listed as “Eugene Clark” in his yearbook photo, was a sophomore at Raytown High School.
Photo courtesy: Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library.

The young Gene attended Our Lady of Lourdes elementary school and Raytown High School. Later, after his father took a job at a Wyandotte County, Kansas golf course, Clark graduated from Bonner Springs High School in 1962. 

He got his big break, however, in Jackson County. 

In August 1963 Clark was playing in a group called the Surf Riders, performing in a Kansas City club called the Castaways, near 43rd and Main streets in Kansas City. Also performing that week, at Swope Park’s Starlight Theatre, was the New Christy Minstrels folk music ensemble. 

One night the Minstrels filed into the Castaways, heard Clark sing and asked him to join them. 

“So he joined the world,” Jeanne Clark told The Kansas City Star in 1998. 

Clark toured with the New Christy Minstrels before leaving to help organize the Byrds. In 1965 Clark’s Kansas City area friends and family members watched him on national television, singing and banging a tambourine while performing the Byrds’ Number 1 hit, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” 

The Byrds were considered an American response to the “British Invasion,” the 1960s onslaught of English acts such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five. 

But Clark left the Byrds in the mid-1960s – allegedly due to a fear of flying, which Clark said was untrue. Another story maintained the young Gene had been traumatized by witnessing a Kansas City area plane crash – a story that his parents, during a 1998 interview, said they’d never heard before. 

The young Clark did, his parents said, suffer from nightmares following the 1957 Ruskin Heights tornado, which destroyed many homes and businesses in south Kansas City before dissipating near Raytown. 

In January 1991 Clark joined other original members of the Byrds in New York City to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

He died a few months later at age 46. 

Doctors attributed Clark’s death to heart failure, although family members have acknowledged his condition had been compounded by occasional substance and alcohol abuse. 

In the years since his death, Clark’s critical reputation has soared. A 1974 solo album, entitled “No Other,” has received extravagant praise. The Economist, the London-based business and finance weekly, recently declared it “not merely a ‘great lost album’ – it is one of the finest albums ever recorded.” 

Several of Clark’s siblings still live in the Kansas City area. In 2018 four of them attended ceremonies in St. Joseph to see their brother inducted into the Missouri Music Hall of Fame. 

At St. Andrew’s Catholic Cemetery in Tipton, Mo., Gene Clark’s grave has been marked with a tambourine.

Today Clark’s grave can be found at St. Andrew’s Catholic Cemetery in Tipton – a final resting place he had requested. Not long ago visitors could easily find his tombstone, which listed his full name, his birth and death dates and the words “No Other” inscribed within a heart. 

Suspended above the tombstone, meanwhile, was a tambourine. 

Brian Burnes – Jackson County Historical Society.