Cowboy Jack Clement Biopic in the Works

Cowboy Jack Clement is headed to the big screen. A feature-length biopic on the singer, songwriter and producer is on the way, with an added bonus: 25 previously unreleased songs.

The Nashville-based Visionary Media Group -- which has previously produced TV programs and documentaries, and even has a partnership with the international music company BMG -- is behind the biopic. The project is still early on in production, with executive producers and Clement's children meetings with screenwriters and directors, and working through key points of the artist's life and career, the project promises to give country, rock and blues music fans a glimpse behind the scenes into some of their favorite music history moments.

“You may not know the name, but the man is someone you’ll never forget,” says VMG in a press release announcing the endeavor. Add Clement's children, Alison and Niles Clement, "Our father was all about music, dreams and fun. We want to keep the music, dreams and fun alive, make his spirit something that can reach the masses."

Clement's story has roots in many others. For example, as country pioneer Charley Pride was embarking on his career at a time when it was considered a risk to stand behind a Black country artist, Clement stepped up to the plate and personally provided the financing for his demo recordings. When Waylon Jennings was recording his lauded 1975 album Dreaming My Dreams, it was Clement, as producer, who suggested stripping the melodies down to the raw sound that defines the classic record.

"He was a sheer-out genius, all soul. If you got around him at the right moment, he could put the world back on track," said Jennings of Clement in his autobiography.

In addition to the biopic, Clement's children and Visionary Media Group promise to release more than two-dozen of the 50-plus unfinished songs that the artist left behind when he died in 2013. Some of "today's best and brightest recording artists -- those who loved and revered the man as well as those who never got to meet him," per the press release, will be involved in the completion and recording of those works.

“When I discovered the unfinished songs among my father’s things, I knew that he had started them for a reason," Alison Clement says. "The stationary that they are written on tells a three-to-four-decade story. While they sat in this folder, he was busy making history. Now, my brother and I want him to continue making history by helping him finish what he started. Who better to do this than the artists and songwriters who he shaped along the way and the next generation influenced by them."