10-4 GOOD BUDDY

Say what you will about America, you cannot deny that, against all odds, fortunes can be made by good old American entrepreneurial invention. Submitted for your approval: advertising executive Billie Dale Fries, aka CW McCall, and his monster radio hit “Convoy”.

If you were sentient during 1975 there was no escaping the ubiquitous Citizen’s Band modulated, clarion voice of the fictional trucker, CW McCall as he barreled across the highways of America, calling out to his fellow haulers, inspiring them to break through the barricades of the “Smoky Bears”, going 98 mph.  It was number one on the Billboard top 100, and number 2 in the UK - proving that everybody in the English speaking world loved CW’s rebel attitude.

It all started when Adman Billie Dale was working on a campaign for the Bozell and Jacobs agency, to sell “Old Home” bread. He invented a series of spots portraying the flirtations between trucker CW and waitress Mavis, whenever the hauler made his bread deliveries to the “Old Home Filler Up an’ Keep on Truckin’ Cafe”. The catchiness of the spots led Billie Dale to the notion that a radio hit trading on the CB craze might connect with folks, and boy howdy, was he ever spot on.

CW McCall (whose initials stood for “Country and Western,” and whose last name came from a copy of McCall’s magazine that was on Billie Dale’s desk) was so popular that more albums and movies followed, and later, flushed with Clios and cash, CB bought a vacation home in Ouray, CO, where he ran for mayor and served for 6 years. Shortly before his death at the age of 93, Billie Dale Fries gave his blessing to the “Freedom Convoy” protesters in Canada to use his anthem in solidarity. “BREAKER BREAKER, RUBBER DUCKIE, LOOKS LIKE WE GOT US A CONVOY!”