The songs that started it
These songs did more than play. They built whole scenes—trucks, highways, cafés, characters, weather, and miles I could see as clearly as if they were on a screen.
A visual listener
When I read a book, it plays in my mind like a movie. Music has always worked the same way. Long before MTV and music videos, truck-driving songs gave me complete little films: characters I could picture, roads I could travel, and scenes I never forgot.
These are some of the songs that made that world real to me—and helped set Take Your Foot Off the Clutch in motion.
Dave Dudley
The fact that he was “pulling out of Pittsburgh” caught my attention right away. I lived outside Pittsburgh. And that voice—Dave Dudley’s voice—was incredible: so deep and resonant.
It was a great song about life on the road. There were truck drivers in my family, so I could picture the world in the song because of the stories they told.
Red Simpson
This was the third song—maybe even the first—I can remember knowing all the words to and singing as a kid. “King of the Road” and “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” are the other two early ones, although I may have known only parts of those.
“I’m a Truck” had a rhythm that stayed with me. I could see that truck sitting beside a smelly cattle truck, looking across the lot at the little pink Mack. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to listen to Buck Owens again. I loved Buck Owens.
Dave Dudley
Another song loaded with imagery. In my mind, I drew a parallel between the girl on the billboard and those old Coppertone suntan ads with the dog pulling on the little girl’s swimsuit. That was the billboard I saw whenever the song played.
I was also amazed that Dave Dudley could sing it for so long without appearing to take a breath—and by the way he drew out the word “highway.”
Joe Stampley
It starts with that big diesel engine firing up. How does that not grab your attention?
All the places they traveled, that rolling rhythm—it was simply a great song, and it was fabulous to listen to while you were driving.
Jerry Reed
Jerry Reed was one of my favorite performers, period. He was always laughing and carrying on and looked as though he would be so much fun to be around. Every song he sang was a lyrical cartoon.
“When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” caught my attention, and I was a fan forever. “Amos Moses,” “Guitar Man,” “She Got the Goldmine”—they were all stories you could see in your mind. Then he could sing “Georgia on My Mind” or “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and be completely soulful. I had also seen him in W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings and The Cannonball Run. He was such a character.
Eddie Rabbitt
When I was growing up, the drinking age in West Virginia was eighteen, and the bars served this lousy 3.2 beer. It was awful—but since we could drink at eighteen, we used to drive down to Wheeling and hit the dance clubs.
One night we were driving along Main Street in front of the Capitol Music Hall when several men began escorting someone across the street. One of them put his hand on the hood of our car and looked at us as he passed. It was Eddie Rabbitt. He was performing that night—August 22, 1981. He touched our car!
I do so much driving, and I always seem to end up driving in the rain, so the song has hit home more than once. I have even posted, “I am not loving a rainy night,” during a rainy road trip.
C.W. McCall
The imagery in this song fascinated me as a kid. My family had a very long list of crazy sayings, but hearing someone on the radio sing that a woman was “built like a sack full of bobcats” was mind-blowing.
And we had hound dogs. Going to a truck stop and having the waitress give you a bone for the dog just sealed the deal for me.
The list keeps rolling
This isn’t a definitive ranking or a closed list. It is the beginning—a handful of songs that stayed with me and helped shape the road ahead. More will join them as the stories unfold.
Tell us the song—and the story that comes with it.