Ah, breaker one-nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c’mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it’s clean clear to Flag Town, c’mon. Yeah, that’s a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy …
Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June
In a Kenworth pullin’ logs
Cab-over Pete with a reefer on
And a Jimmy haulin’ hogs
We was headin’ for bear on I-one-oh
'Bout a mile outta Shaky Town
I says, "Pig Pen, this here’s the Rubber Duck.
“And I’m about to put the hammer down.”
Hi! I’m the guy with the Annoying Real Life Fact that will make you say Really, cool! or I knew that or Who gives a @$#%!:
“Convoy” was written and performed by C.W. McCall, whose real name is Chip Davis, who is the founder and driving force behind Mannheim Steamroller, which means if Convoy hadn’t provided the seed money for MS, there would be approximately 51,600 fewer Xmas songs on the radio every year.
Actually, that’s not quite true. C. W. McCall’s real name is Bill Fries. He used to be an advertising executive, until he hooked up with Chip Davis to record a bunch of McCall albums and the Mannheim stuff.
Other annoying but fun facts: Bill Fries used to be the mayor of Ouray, Colorado (a town he sang about in at least one of his songs–“Riverside Slide.”)
“C. W. McCall” originated as the name of the truck driver in a series of commercials for Old Home Bread, which Fries was the ad exec on. Mavis also appeared in these ads.
I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story elsewhere on this board, but it bears repeating in this particular thread. “Convoy” is only a bit player in it, but I thought it might bring a smile anyway.
I was DJ-ing at a medium-market country station at the height of “Convoy”'s success on the charts.
Have you ever had the experience when you’re just about to say something, and then at the very last minute you decide to say it a different way? Sometimes, you end up with an unfortunate combination of the two.
In back announcing C.W. McCall’s song, I had planned to say “We want to send that one out to all you truckers out there.”
Then I had a last-minute notion to say instead “…all you fellas who drive truck.”
You can guess how it actually came out!
I did the only thing you can do under the circumstances…I carried on as if absolutely nothing was wrong.
I didn’t get a single phone call, and I know people were listening, as the station I was on was the top-rated station in the market at the time.
