Clint Black admits he never expected to live past 21 after tragic losses

Clint Black didn’t think he would live past 21.

The country music star has written a new memoir, "Killin’ Time," named after his triple-platinum 1989 debut album. The book explores the Grammy winner’s upbringing and how he rose to fame, selling more than 20 million records.

Black’s early years were anything but joyful. In the book, he admitted he was shocked to reach 17 — and convinced he wouldn’t make it to 21. "Surely," he wrote, "I wouldn’t make it to the ripe old age of 21."

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The 64-year-old told Fox News Digital he had good reason to take a "fatalistic view" of his life.

"I had really come out of watching friends die — overdoses, automobile accidents — a friend got hit on a motorcycle and killed," he said. "Another one was hit on a bicycle and killed. My brother narrowly avoided being called up for the Vietnam War, which ended before he was called. And my grandfather and his brother died of cancer. It just seemed like there was a lot of that going around. And why should I be so lucky to live on and on?"

"It didn’t keep me up at night, but I lived with it," he said.

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Black himself had a near-death experience. In the book, the singer-songwriter recalled spending his childhood exploring Buffalo Bayou near Houston with friends — riding trails, fishing, catching snakes and building campfires. 

But after a heavy rainstorm, he wrote that the dam at Addicks Reservoir was opened to manage rising water levels, turning the bayou into what Black described as "a raging torrent of white water rapids."

Black, who was 13 at the time, and his friends decided to "jump in at the headwaters and just free-float in the rapids." Soon after, he found himself fighting for his life.

"We didn’t see the huge oak tree in the water, just a few hundred feet downstream from where we jumped in," Black wrote. "It must have toppled the day before in the heavy rain. Now it was creating a pocket of strong suction all around it. My friends and I could sense that sudden pull and quickly headed for the banks. The chance to get out was gone in an instant.

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"My friends all made it to safety, but I was unable to escape the pull of the current and was sucked into the tree and down to the bottom of the bayou. My eyes, sinuses and lungs burned from what I guess must’ve been poison oak wrapped around the tree."

Looking back, Black said every time he tried to climb back up, he grew weaker. He fought the urge to "give up."

Black told Fox News Digital that, to this day, he still remembers the burning sensation throughout his body as he heard his friends screaming from the banks. They spotted a venomous snake near him.

"It was too dark for me to see underwater," Black said. "But the visual I had in my mind of the bottom of the bayou and that rapid water pushing me against the tree, it’s a picture in my mind of something I couldn’t see back then. But it just added to that feeling that I wasn’t going to make it out of there alive."

It wouldn’t be the last time Black tested his luck.

During his tour for the 2004 album "Spend My Time," Black went mountain biking on trails in Wisconsin when he made a wrong turn and crashed headfirst into a tree trunk. He wrote that he felt "the shock shoot through both arms and out to my fingertips." After feeling disoriented for a few minutes, Black initially believed he was fine, unaware that he had seriously injured his spine.

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"I didn’t realize it was that dramatic," Black told Fox News Digital. "It wasn’t a dramatic bicycle accident, but it was a dramatic injury. The disc ruptured in my cervical spine and bruised my spinal cord, so it had to be taken out."

"It would manifest itself in burning sensations in my legs when I looked up and then, eventually, in my back," he explained. "This was putting pressure on the cord. I played it off as a symptom that was weird, but it wasn’t important. I [had] put my body through a lot and thought it was just something I was going through. And then at one point, I realized I was not going through it. I was living with it."

It would be months after the accident before Black began experiencing serious symptoms. He could no longer push them aside. His search for answers eventually led him to neurologic spine surgeon Dr. Robert S. Bray.

"My first thought was cancer," Black admitted. "I ran down, had some imaging done and found out the bad news. They were going to have to go through my throat to get to my spine. They were going to have to move my vocal cords and everything else out of the way."

According to the book, Black had a "dangerously compressed spinal cord." Dr. Bray told Black his only option was surgery and to "put in a metal plate directly under my vocal cords and voice box." Dr. Bray also warned there was a risk Black’s singing career would be over. Black said he wanted to run out of the doctor’s office screaming.

"It was frightening," he said. "I think luck has been on my side because I got in with a great surgeon who would eventually work on all my injuries over time."

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"The jury was still out on the never-singing part again," he wrote. "After all the years in the clubs, worrying about my voice holding up on tour and finally finding a great voice coach to bring stability to my job as a singer, I was far more worried than I had ever been before. I had no plan B; that astronaut job was a definite no-go. It would take some time to find out if I still had a voice, if I had a job to return to."

A month after surgery, Black was singing his Christmas songs live on "Good Morning America." Dr. Bray warned, "You’re going to be back because you have a lot of trouble ahead of you with your spine." He was right.

"For the next 20 years, about every year when my tour ended, I would go in and have another surgery," said Black. "Bit by bit, level by level, he corrected many of the problems."

While Black may have once believed he wouldn’t live past 21, the singer now says his story is far from over.

"What keeps me going now is the feeling that I haven’t peaked," he beamed. "I’m still getting better. I’m a better musician. I’m better at keeping a healthy family together on the road, my band and crew. I’m a better artist, better songwriter. I work at it every day. I practice on my instrument at least five days a week for hours. I’m improving as an entertainer."

"I think if and when the time comes when I feel like I’m in decline, that’ll be when I’ll become less motivated to do it all," he said. "But I enjoy my work. I’m excited about the future. So that’s a big motivator. I get up every day and put myself to the test."