Name: How trucker country music became a '70s fad
Uploaded: 2022-02-24T23:43:00.000Z
Duration: 13 min 26 s
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I'm in Nebraska right now and it's like sixty five degrees. Not a cloud

in the sky. I've got all my windows open.

Today, Chip is most well-known for his musical group Mannheim Steamroller,

which has madedozens of chart-topping Christmas albums.

But in the 1970s, he was known for something completely different.

Chip was right out of college, living in Nebraska,

and writing commercial jingles for an advertising agency.

My clients, they were like Black and Decker Drills, and Greyhound Bus, Continental.

I wrote somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 jingles.

And he wasn’t that plugged into the world of pop music.

I didn't really know what some of the styles were.

I remember the first time I got asked to write some R&B, I didn't know

what R&B stood for. I thought that was a restaurant in downtown Omaha, you know?

When I was with the agency, I said I'll write any type of music but don't

ask me to write country because I don't know anything about it.

This is where things get interesting... By 1976 his country song was number one on the Billboard charts.

"Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck"

This is Convoy, a song Chip Davis produced

with his writing partner Bill Fries, a creative director at the ad agency he worked for.

It’s lyrics captured a fictional conversation

between two truck drivers across CB radio. And it was wildly popular.

It’s probably the largest record that I created.

It was the number one song in the US and Canada, and charted across Europe.

It was so huge that Hollywood made an entire film based on it.

It’s a strange song to listen to 45 years later.

To many, its lyrics might not even make sense.

What’s a bear in the air? Or a suicide Jockey? Why is he called Rubber Duck?

But this song is a time capsule from a brief era when truck drivers were folk heroes,

and the country music that soundtracked their lives topped the charts.

Country music has always has always dealt with sort of issues of wanderlust and travel.

That’s Nate Gibson.  He’s a country music scholar.

Those sort of played out in the '30s and '40s through imagery of the western frontier,

"All along the water banks, waiting for a train..."

There have always labor songs about American occupational heroes.

"John Henry was a steel-driving man, yes..."

But as travel and work shifted to roads and automobiles,

so did the characters country music focused on.

Truck drivers became country’s new folk heroes.

The first trucker hit in 1939 was Cliff Bruner doing "Truck Driver's Blues."

"Got a low down feelin' truck driver's blues..."

Throughout the '40s, there are scattered remnants

of truck songs that sort of cut through the masses.

But things changed dramatically in 1956 when President Eisenhower unveiled a plan

"This is the American dream of freedom on wheels."

"An Automotive age, traveling on timesaving super highways."

These interconnected highways allowed people to travel long distances more easily,

Especially in the long-haul trucking industry.

And with that, a new market for country music opened up.

Truckers spent the majority of their day and night staring down an open highway.

It was a lonely profession, and often the only entertainment they had

When you went to a truck stop, you could always play songs on the jukebox.

It's important to know there are really two major types of radio stations

in the United States in the 1960s and '70s.

That’s Travis Stimeling, he's a country music scholar.

There are AM stations that can only broadcast during the daytime

and then there are AM stations that can broadcast overnight.

These night time stations were really unique.

Because they had such little signal interference they could travel much longer distances

They would cater often to the truck drivers who were on the road all night long.

And they would play these songs. Songs about having pride in being a trucker,

these weepers, about being away from your family and really just all sorts of country music.

You have "Six Days on the Road," a massive hit by Dave Dudley

"My home town's coming in sight If you think I'm happy you're right"

"Six days on the road and I'm gonna make it home tonight..."

It draws on a lot of what we call the Bakersfield Sound.

with electric instruments, Telecaster guitars, lots of high frequency sounds and

It's the kind of music that could keep you awake if you were driving a long-haul trip across the country.

"Six Days on The Road" climbed to #2 on the country charts

right alongside Johnny Cash’s classic, “Ring of Fire”

"Then I'll know that you will plainly see..."

And it kicked off, what many consider the golden age of trucker country music.

I would consider the golden age of trucker country between 1963 and 1966.

Not only were individual artists releasing singles and albums, but record labels were

making compilation albums centered around the trucking theme.

They put out their first trucker-specific album in 1963. And it sold so well that every artist who came into the studio after that,

they would say, "Hey, the session is great, but can you add...

a country music song about truck driving to that?"

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