ROOTS of Country Music

The Long Lonesome Road of the American Trucker, Part 1

Truck driving music is a genre of country music with a fusion of honky-tonk, country-rock and the Bakersfield Sound. It has the tempo of country-rock and the emotion of honky-tonk and its lyrics focus on a truck driver's lifestyle. Truck driving country songs often deal with trucks and love. Well-known artists who sing truck driving country include Dave Dudley, Red Sovine, Dick Curless, Red Simpson and C.W. MCCall.

The rig traffic was rapidly increasing in America during the 60s - and so were the trucks themselves, getting bigger, heavier, stronger and faster. The highway-net got also wider, which led to longer transportation distances. For the truck-drivers it meant more lonely hours on the road. The only diversion and awake-keeper they had at nights were radio stations playing music, particularly aimed for them; the songs about the life and the hard work of trucking people. In time, all this resulted in the popularization of trucker country music.

As early as 1939, Truck Driver's Blues, featuring vocals and piano from Moon Mullican, provided a lyrical template of the road ahead: weary, lonely days relieved by a cup of coffee, a honky-tonk gal and a couple of drinks before saddling up for the next day's ride. Many of these juke-box hits were aimed at gear-jammers themselves, celebrating the trucker as the last of the American cowboys, navigating the frontier of commerce as they raced home to their loved-ones. 

By the 1960's Dave Dudley, Dick Curless and Red Simpson were scoring frequent trucking-themed hits. Curless' A Tombstone Every Mile, written about a tragically dangerous section of Route 2A in Maine, may be the only song ever to help get a U.S. Interstate built. In the 1970s radio station WWVA aired a popular program called, Truckers Jamboree. Starday and King Records released numerous popular trucker albums by Simpson, Dudley, Sovine, Curless and others. 

Country music and truck driving reached an intersection several decades before the crossover popularity of C.W. McCall's Convoy. The regional itinerancy of country musicians, touring the signal range of radio giants like WSM (Nashville), WWVA (Wheeling) and KWKH (Shreveport), found them pounding the same pavement as America's truckers, subjecting themselves to the same hardships of life on the road and writing about it in their songs.

Dave Dudley: Six Days on the Road

When it comes to trucking songs, deep-voiced Dave Dudley was best-known for his truck-driving country anthems of the 1960s and 1970s. Dave was born on May 3, 1928, in Spencer, Wis. He played on semi-pro baseball teams until an arm injury forced an end to his athletic career in 1950. Moving toward a career in country music, he became a radio disc jockey, working at stations in Wisconsin, Iowa, Idaho and Minnesota.

He formed the Dave Dudley Trio in 1953. Dudley was sidelined for several months in 1960 after being struck by a car following a performance in Minneapolis. Dave's success manifested after many years of working noisy, small town clubs. Dudley first hit the Billboard country singles chart in 1961 with Maybe I Do, released on Vee Records.

He charted a top-20 a year later and then Dave came across a song called Six Days on the Road. At his own expense, Dave recorded and released the song on the tiny Golden Wing label in 1963. With the help of a friend, they placed the song in truck-stop jukeboxes across the country. The rocking song about a truck driver going home went all the way to No. 2 in 1963 and subsequently launched his career. Encouraged by the success of Six Days, Dave released Cowboy Boots on Golden Wing and it climbed to No. 3 that year.

After that, Dave landed a contract with Mercury Records (1963). At the end of the year he released his first single for the label called Last Day in the Mines (No. 7, 1963). Dudley scored more big hits in the 1960s, including Truck Drivin' Son-of-a-Gun (No. 3, 1965), There Ain’t No Easy Run (No. 10, 1968) and his biggest chart song, The Pool Shark (No. 1, 1970). Dudley died on December 22, 2003, aged 75, after suffering a heart attack at his home in Wisconsin.

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Red Sovine: Red was the last giant of country music’s truck driving singers. Red trekked through the country music world for decades as a modest singer, but it was the song that hit shortly before his death, Teddy Bear that he will always be remembered for. The self-proclaimed King of the Narrations with his telling accounts about truck driving, are regarded as classic trucker jukebox selections.

Red Sovine was born into an impoverished family in Charleston, West Virginia. Red's mother taught him how to play the guitar. By age seventeen, Red was working professionally. In 1948 he formed his own band, The Echo Valley Boys. Red moved to Shreveport, Louisiana and began performing on KWKH's Hayride (1949 ~ 1954). While there Red met Hank Williams, who convinced his label (MGM Records), to sign Red. The Saturday night Hayride was the closest thing to competition for the famed Saturday night Grand Ole Opry (GOO) and in many ways it acted as a farm team for up and coming GOO talent. When Hank Williams left his headline position at the Hayride to join the GOO full time, Red filled the spot.

In 1959, Red signed with Starday and began touring the club circuit. During a tour in Montana (1963), Red heard Charley Pride singing at a club and urged him to move to Nashville. Sovine opened doors for Pride, but his own career hit a lull. Dream House for Sale (No. 22, 1964), charted after an eight year chart gap.

Starday was renowned for producing a level of pure, undiluted country music that was becoming increasingly rare on the major labels. Red broke into the truck driving genre after the craze had taken off. Sovine found his niche when he recorded Giddyup Go (No. 1, 1965). Giddyup Go is a story of an older long-distance truck driver who rediscovers his long-lost son driving another truck on the same highway. It was Sovine's biggest chart song, which spent six weeks atop the country charts. In 1967 Red recorded his follow-up truck driving hit Phantom 309 (No. 9, 1967).

In 1974 Red signed a recording contract with Gusto and he kicked off 1976 with one of the greatest novelty records of all time with Teddy Bear (No. 1, 1976). It sold over a million copies and was the only gold single to come out of Nashville that year. Teddy Bear, tells the tale of a disabled boy who lost his truck driver father in a highway accident and keeps his CB radio base as his only companion.

Sovine continued to record on the Starday and Gusto labels in the five year span that followed the release of Teddy Bear. During that time, Red made many recordings that showcased his exceptional vocals and highlighted his skills as one of the greatest story-tellers. Little Joe (1976) was his last big hit. On April 4, 1980, Sovine suffered a fatal heart attack while driving in Nashville.

Red Simpson: A regular on the Bakersfield club scene during the 1960s and a prolific songwriter, Red Simpson made his mark with wave with big rig songs. Red Simpson was born on March 6, 1934 in Higley, Arizona, into a musical family that later relocated to Bakersfield, California. He played in a country band while service in Korea aboard the naval hospital ship, the Repose, then played the clubs around Bakersfield, California, where he became a professional musician.

Simpson was working at the Wagon Wheel in Lamont, California when Fuzzy Owens (Haggard’s future manager) saw him and arranged for Simpson to work at his Clover Club as a piano player. Red then got a job replacing rising star Buck Owens at the Blackboard Club on weekends.

After several years as an excellent song writer and respectable country music performer, Simpson finally came into his own by pretending to be something he wasn't: A truck driver. For years prior to the trucker music craze, Simpson was one of the most prolific and admired of all country music song smiths. Merle Haggard and Buck Owens were Simpson's two biggest clients. Simpson began writing songs with Buck in 1962. As a songwriter, Red scored his first number one hit with Sam's Place, recorded by Buck. After that, Simpson decided to become a full-time writer. Buck alone recorded thirty-five tunes written by Red.

Red began recording for Capitol Records in 1966 and charted the top-40 singles, Roll Truck Roll (1966), The Highway patrol (1966), Diesel Smoke (1966) and his only top-ten, I’m a Truck (No. 4, 1971). Throughout the album, Roll Truck Roll, the loneliness, transience and kinetic energy of truck driving are married with great effect to the emotional ups and downs of country singing and Red Simpson proves himself an able interpreter of his own top-shelf songs. In 1972, he debuted on the Grand Ole Opry.

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Dick Curless: A Tombstone Every Mile

Like Dave Dudley, Dick Curless had a deep, rich voice and a cache of hot-driving and high-way riding songs. Curless, commonly known as the Baron of Country Music, after one of his popular songs, The Baron (1963), was a pioneer of the trucking music genre. Dick was easily distinguished because of the patch he usually wore over his right eye.

Curless was best known for singing truck-driving songs. A tall man with a rich baritone voice, Curless was born on March 17, 1932 in Fort Fairfield, Maine. He started out professionally in 1948 with the Trail Blazers at a radio station in Ware, Massachusetts. He was drafted in 1951 and while stationed in the Far East, he frequently appeared on the Armed Forces Network, as The Rice Paddy Ranger.

Curless returned to Maine three years later and began singing in Bangor clubs. He got his big break when he won the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts contest. Afterward Dick began performing in Las Vegas and Hollywood and inked a recording contract with Tower Records in 1965.

Curless recorded one of the biggest hits of his career, A Tombstone Every Mile (Tower Records, No. 5, 1965), by far his best know recording on the Billboard country charts, which propelled him to national fame. From 1966 to 1968, Dick toured the nation with the Buck Owens All American Show. The pinnacle of his career came in the late 1960s with eleven top-40 hits, including Six Times a Day (No. 12, 1965) and All of Me Belongs to You (No. 28, 1967).

Beginning in 1970, his records were released on Capitol and he had several more hits, including Big Wheel Cannon Ball (No. 27, 1970), which was based on the classic, Wabash Cannonball. Curless was a member of the Wheeling Jamboree, and from 1966-1968. In 1973 Capitol released the album, Live at The Wheeling Truck Drivers Jamboree.Then he left the label after a falling-out.

Curless was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame 1978. The Baron passed away on May 25, 1995.

Bill Fries, aka C.W. McCall: Convoy

C.W. McCall was born on November 15, 1928 in Audubon, Iowa. In 1973, while working for the Omaha advertising firm of Bozell & Jacobs, Bill Fries created a television campaign for the Old Home Bread brand of the Metz Baking Company. The advertisements told of the adventures of truck driver C.W. McCall, his dog Sloan and of the truck stop that McCall frequented, The Old Home Café. Bill based the character and his environment on his own upbringing in western Iowa.

The commercials were very successful. So successful, that the Des Moines Register published the air times of the commercials in the daily television listings. McCall helped drive the trucker craze of the '70s with a slew of novelty tunes, few of which have aged very well

McCall is best known for his once popular single, Convoy (No. 1, 1976), which came at the peak of the CB fad in the United States. It sold over two million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1975. While Bill provided the lyrics to the song and the voice of C.W. McCall, his collaborator, Chip Davis wrote the music. Though McCall is not a one-hit wonder, Convoy has since become his signature song.

Previously, however McCall charted the song Wolf Creek Pass (No. 12, 1974), a misadventure of a truck with brake failure. Two other songs reached Billboard's top-20, including Classified (No. 13, 1975) and the sentimental song, Roses for Mama (No. 2, 1977).  McCall’s recordings we released on MGM (1974 ~ 1975) and Polydor (1976 ~ 1979).

In 1978, the movie Convoy was released, which was based on the C.W. McCall song. The film starred Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Burt Young and Ernest Borgnine. It featured a new version of the song, written specially for the film.

Like most musical acts, C.W. McCall toured the country, with Bill singing the words of C.W. and the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant Boys playing the music. In reality, the Boys were Chip Davis and an eclectic mix of musicians, who spent their non-C.W. McCall time recording albums of Chip’s music. Chip was a pioneer of New Age music, and his albums, recorded under the group name of Mannheim Steamroller, were also successful. But the fact that Chip Davis was the music behind C.W. McCall is not a well-known fact.

McCall never took himself seriously, and tunes like Crispy Critters (No. 32, 1976) and "Round the World with the Rubber Duck (No. 40, 1976) will inspire a laugh at just how weird the 1970s could be. In 1986, McCall was elected mayor of the town of Ouray, Colorado, ultimately serving for six years.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Researched, compiled and written by Richard Bell, Roots of Country Music, Aug. 4, 2011.