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Semi Songs
Upbeat, downbeat, beat it — tunes tell truckin' tales.Upbeat, downbeat, beat it — tunes tell truckin' tales.
By Michael Perry
Nothing picks up the tempo of the rhythm of the road like the right music. Whether it crackles across AM radio waves or booms crystal-clear from a thousand-dollar CD player, music is as much a part of trucking as diesel and black coffee. While today's trucker is as likely to listen to classic rock as classic country, good old fashioned truckin' music still has a big audience, as artists like Dale Watson and labels like Diesel Only Records can attest. Where did this music come from, and where can you find it? Road King decided to find out.
According to "An Annotated History of Truck Driving Music," a pamphlet written by Jeremy Tepper, head of Diesel Only Records (http://www.dieselonly.com), truckin' music dates back to the release of the Ted Daffan song, "Truck Driver's Blues" by Cliff Bruner and His Boys in 1939. Daffan wrote the song after noticing how much truck drivers loved country music. "They'd feed the jukebox before they ordered coffee," writes Tepper.
In 1954, Terry Fell recorded "Truck Driving Man," a song that has been covered by a number of artists over the years. Still, the trucking genre didn't really come into its own until the 1960s, when Starday Records began releasing "jukebox-ready truck driving songs" including "Give Me 40 Acres" ("and I'll turn this thing around," goes the rest of the lyric) by the Willis Brothers, and several numbers by the King of the Tearjerkers, Red Sovine ("Giddyup Go," "Phantom 309," "Teddy Bear"). Starday also released several compilation albums in the '60s, including That's Truckin', and Diesel Smoke and Dangerous Curves.
When it comes to trucking anthems, it's tough to beat "Six Days on the Road," which became a national hit for Dave Dudley in 1963. Written by a pair of truckers, it hit #2 on the Billboard country charts, and made #32 on the pop charts. In 1965, Del Reeves made trucking music history when he hit #1 with "Girl on the Billboard." In 1966, Kay Adams had a hit with "Little Pink Mack," a song sung from the point of view of a female trucker — a revolutionary concept at the time. Throughout the '60s and well into the '70s, trucking songs were a regular component of country music radio playlists, including "Tombstone Every Mile," by Dick Curless; "Widow Maker" by Jimmy Martin; "Nitro Express" and "I'm a Truck," by Red Simpson; "I've Been Everywhere," by Hank Snow; "How Fast Them Trucks Can Go," by Claude Gray; and "Movin' On," by Merle Haggard.
In 1975, one of the biggest trucking songs of all time — for better or worse — transformed the entire nation into a ratchet-jawin' pack of Good Buddy gear-jammers as everyone dropped the hammer and fell in behind a big ol' hit called "Convoy," by C.W. McCall (actually Bill Fries, a professional disc jockey).
The song's effect on the image of truckers is debatable, but one thing is certain: by the time the '80s rolled around, straight-up trucking music became scarce. There were a few mainstream hits related to trucking ("Drivin' My Life Away" by Eddie Rabbitt; "Roll On" by Alabama; "18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses" by Kathy Mattea; and "Big Wheels in the Moonlight" by Dan Seals, "Papa Loved Mama" by Garth Brooks, for example), but for the most part, truckin' music was hidden on old 8-tracks and vinyl albums.
Lately, however, truckin' music has found new life in younger hands. Fed up with Nashville slickness, many "alternative" country fans and performers have turned to the old stuff — and in the process, have developed a taste for songs about the big rig life. Some listen for the fun of it — many of the old songs are undeniably cheesy — but others take the genre seriously. Ask Dale Watson, who recently released "The Truckin' Sessions," if he thinks truck songs are cheesy, and you might find yourself trying to digest his guitar.
While Tepper gets a kick out of some of the goofier trucking music, he has made a conscious effort to keep Diesel Only releases out of cheese territory. "I see what we're doing as part of a living tradition, an extension of the Starday thing. [Starday president] Don Pierce wasn't putting those records out to be kitschy, he was trying to put out records that would sell, and music that would appeal to truck drivers. I was really conscious of that when we did ‘Rig Rock Deluxe' (a 1996 compilation of new and old truckin' music). I wanted it to be something truckers would dig, and not feel it was being done with a smirk."
Diesel Only's most recent release, in collaboration with Razor & Tie Entertainment, is "The Best of Red Simpson: Country Western Truck Drivin' Singer." "Red Simpson is a giant," says Tepper. "[Road Gang Radio host] Dave Nemo considers ‘The Four Horsemen of Truck Driving Music' to be Dave Dudley, Red Sovine, Dick Curless, and Red Simpson."
Does it take a truck to make a truckin' song? Not everyone thinks so. In a recent truck.net discussion of favorites, "Six Days On The Road," showed up frequently, but so did "Runnin' On Empty," by Jackson Browne; "Truckin', " by the Grateful Dead; "I Can't Drive 55," by Sammy Hagar; "Nothin' but the Taillights," by Clint Black; "Me and Bobby Magee," by Kris Kristofferson; and "Carryin' Your Love With Me," by George Strait. Linda Ronstadt's "Willin," is another example of the diesel-flavored road song.
Tepper agrees. "I always looked at Steve Earle's ‘Guitar Town' as a sort of seminal truck driving record, in a way. The song ‘Go To Sleep Little Rock and Roller' is about calling your kid from a truckstop. It just tears your heart out." While Earle is singing about the road from a musician's point of view, Tepper feels the emotion resonates with truckers.
"Musicians can relate to a lot of the truck driver's experience. If you go back through the whole lineage of truck driving artists, very few are actual truck drivers. You'll find some examples — Red Simpson drove an ice cream truck for a few weeks [Tepper chuckles] — but by and large they were professional musicians making music for truck drivers."
But why truckers? Why no albums filled with accountant songs, or astronaut songs? "I think it's an extension from the cowboy song tradition, and later, the railroad men," says Tepper. "The adventurous spirit — man over machine."
Currently working on a sequel to "Rig Rock Deluxe," Tepper's fondest hope is that he will someday be able to complete a definitive trucking music anthology. "It will start with the original ‘Truck Driver's Blues' — the original Terry Fell recording — and go from there," says Tepper. The Country Music Foundation has agreed to do the project with Tepper but the project is being held up until a distribution deal is in place. In the meantime, trucking music is slowly becoming available again.
Hollywood on the Highway
They were bigger than life when originally projected on giant screens, many of them first appearing during the era of grandiose motion picture palaces. Today, these big rigs and their drivers are largely available for home viewing on video cassettes and often on TV channels that feature classic films. Here are some of the best that feature a trucker and his or her most prized possession in a leading role.
Black Dog (1998)
Breakdown (1997)
California Straight Ahead (1937)
Citizens Band (1977)
Coast to Coast (1980)
Convoy (1978)
Deadhead Miles (1972)
Duel (1971)
Every Which Way But
Loose (1978)
F.I.S.T. (1978)
Flatbed Annie and Sweetiepie (1979)
Great Smokey Roadblock (1976)
High-Ballin' (1978)
The Long Haul (1957)
Road Games (1981)
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Smokey and the Bandit 2 (1980)
Smokey and the Bandit 3 (1983)
Smokey and the Hotwire Gang (1979)
Sorcerer (1977)
Steel Cowboy (1978)
They Drive By Night (1940)
Thieves' Highway (1949)
Think Big (1990)
The Wages of Fear (1953)
White Line Fever (1975)
Willa (1979)
— Richard Steen Williams
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