Little information exists on Clarence Wiley, yet he left behind one of the more popular rags ever (actually a cakewalk) that was initially independently published. Born in Bellaire, Ohio, to house painter Benson Irving Wiley and his wife Ella E. Couplin, the family had moved to Lincoln, Iowa by the time of 1900 census. Clarence was one of five siblings, including Earl Edgar (1887), Carle (10/1890), who died in 1901 at the age of 11, Ernest Raymond (7/1893), and one other sibling, gender and age uncertain.

The 1900 census showed 16-year-old Clarence as a store clerk, possibly in a pharmacy. It is known is that he became a pharmacist in Oskaloosa, Iowa, likely on reaching age 21 in 1904, which would help to explain the title of his only publication, the cakewalk Car-Barlick-Acid Rag-Time. Wiley obviously believed in this fun-to-play composition, as he went to great effort to publish it himself. It was dedicated to Fay [M.] Watts, a telegraph operator in Oskaloosa of approximately the same age as Clarence. Officially copyrighted in August 1901, it was first published by Wiley in 1903. Little more was needed to spread the word, as no less than two publishing houses picked it up over the next few years. First was the Giles Brothers firm in Quincy, Iowa in 1904. The wife of brother Henry, Imogene (Rupert) Giles, was also a ragtime composer. Then publishing giant Jerome H. Remick bought the copyright and plates in 1907, making it a national hit.

Even with a promising future as a pharmacist, Clarence decided to try his hand at being a musician, and traveled or performed with various vaudeville companies from 1905 into early 1908. His parents had moved back to Ohio by 1905, which may have influenced his direction as well. He lived in both Logansport and Elkhart, Indiana, for three or more years during that period. During much of that time Clarence played at the Crystal vaudeville theater. He also fronted a small orchestra for local gigs. A notice in Variety on March 23, 1907, stated that he and his fellow musicians were "above par." He eventually graduated to the more prestigious Bucklen Opera House. It appears that while he was at the Crystal, Clarence was having an affair with the wife of Joe Platz of Elkhart, a brakeman on the Lake Shore line. As noted in the Goshen Daily Democrat of December 12, 1907, Wiley "took a fancy to Mrs. Platz and on several occasions they went to summering places together, notably so to the lakes north of Elkhart." On the evening of December 12, 1907, while playing the piano at the Bucklen where Wiley was now employed, Platz entered the theater and started down the aisle towards Wiley in an apparent outrage, "determined to whip the musician." Wiley jumped over the piano, ran across the stage through the scenery, and exited the rear of the building. His friends smuggled him out of town for a week or so.

Hardly the end of it, when Wiley returned to town with Van Dyke & Eaton, he was guarded in the orchestra pit by five men determined to keep Platz at bay. After the show, with bodyguards in tow, Wiley and Platz met in the alley. Platz claimed he was on his way home and would not fight when he was hit over the head "with some kind of instrument." (Whether that was musical or simply a blackjack is unclear.) All involved spent the night in a jail cell. A few days later an article appeared in the Elkhart Truth, titled Forgotten and Forgiven:

Just the same, Joe and his wife were no longer in good stead with each other, and he filed for a divorce soon after.

Clarence died in Chicago while working as the musical director of the Van Dyke & Eaton organization, his occupation listed as musician on his death record. He had arrived at a Chinese laundry (in this case, slang for an opium den) on Tuesday, March 3, 1908, looking for a temporary lodging (or most likely, a fix). They directed him to a couch in a back room where he laid down, and never woke up. After a few hours when the owner determined that Wiley was dead, the police were called in. The coroner reported that Clarence died as the result of a morphine overdose, and had only an $8.75 check in his pocket to identify him. In an ironic twist, Joe Platz had received a divorce from his cheating wife that very same afternoon. Wiley was buried next to his brother Carl in Sixteen Cemetery in Prairie Township, Keokuk County located in southeast Iowa. His mother was laid to rest there in 1912. Fay Watts was found living in Omaha in 1910, having not yet married, and later moved to Northern California.

There was an awful lot of great folk ragtime to draw on in the Iowa/Nebraska region, and Wiley's single cakewalk represents a good example of the use of some of those themes. In an ironic way, his story was a good example, or perhaps a cautionary tale, of the travails faced by itinerant pianists who got caught up in the nefarious "sportin' life" of that time.