C. W. RECALLED
Pig Pen, 10-4, this here’s the Rubber Duck, we got word round here that one of our truckers didn’t make it, fer shur it’s one of the smokies that got im… Pig Pen, 10-4, I hear ya, yer sayin’ it was just the Big C…
From annoying Donald Duck impersonations to Chuck Berry’s “bell”, the 70s were no stranger to bizarre novelty songs, and in for the ride was one William Fries. As the creative director of an advertising agency in the early 70s, Fries created the fictitious truck driver C. W. McCall for a series of commercials. The success of the ads inspired Fries to adopt the McCall persona as his own for a musical career. He recorded a number of truck-driving country songs influenced by the CB radio fad, of which “Convoy” proved most enduring, topping the US charts and reaching #2 in the UK. His tale of a convoy rebellion, with its hodgepodge of trucker and CB lingo, joined “Sukiyaki” and “Volare” as the rare foreign-language song to break out into the English-speaking world.
“Convoy” was so popular that its plot formed the basis of a Kris Kristofferson movie two years later, and just this year a new convoy of COVID vaccine mandate bellyachers in Canada adopted it as an anthem as they obstructed Canuck highways. McCall, then in hospice with lung cancer, approved of the protestors using his song, though kept it ambiguous whether he was supporting the protests themselves or was just happy “Convoy” was in the news again. He also served as the mayor of Ouray, Colorado for six years, and two teams are shouting hip hip Ouray after his death aged 93: Dead and Deader, and joker points for my US charttopper theme Poor Little Ghoul. Ain’t that a beautiful sight?
C. W. McCall
15 November 1928 – 1 April 2022, aged 93
2 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀 5 POINTS, 🃏 (x1) 10 POINTS)