Decoder Ring: "We Got Ourselves a Convoy"

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Episode: Decoder Ring: "We Got Ourselves a Convoy"
Date: May 13, 2022
Host(s): Willa Paskin (Decoder Ring); Chris Molanphy (Hit Parade)
Reported by: Evan Chung

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the unlikely rise of the 1976 novelty hit "Convoy" by C.W. McCall, examining its origins in advertising, its connection to the trucking and CB radio boom of the 1970s, and its enduring place in popular culture—recently revived with trucker protests in Canada. Through interviews, historical context, and music snippets, the episode explores how a quirky song about truckers and citizens band (CB) radios became both a cultural and commercial phenomenon.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Trucker Craze and "Convoy"’s Cultural Context

• The episode opens with an inquiry into the 1970s trucker phenomenon in pop culture, asking why truckers and their lingo became so popular (01:32).
• Truckers were featured in several major movies, such as "Smokey and the Bandit" and "White Line Fever," and were at the center of a national zeitgeist (02:08–02:25).

2. The Origins of C.W. McCall and "Convoy"

From Bread Commercials to Country Charts

• Bill Fries (C.W. McCall): Originally an advertising art director in Omaha, Nebraska, who partnered with jingle writer Chip Davis (05:47).
• They developed a campaign for "Old Home Bread," featuring two fictional characters: C.W. (a trucker, voiced by Fries) and Mavis (a waitress). The campaign became a regional hit (06:08–07:49).
• The music from the ads, credited to the C.W. McCall character, was released as a single, leading to a hit on the country charts ("We struck something there... People identified with these characters." – Bill Fries, 07:49).

Inspiration from the Oil Crisis

• The oil embargo (1973) and gas shortages had widespread impacts, especially on truckers (09:19–12:11).
• Restrictions included rationing and a national speed limit of 55 mph ("double nickels"), greatly angering independent truckers (11:49–12:48).

3. CB Radios and the Birth of the Convoy Subculture

• Truckers adopted CB radios for camaraderie and tradecraft, developing their own handles and a coded lingo (13:17–13:49).
  • "My handle was Music Man." – Chip Davis (13:46)
  • "Breaker 1-9, this here’s Rubber Duck..." – Bill Fries (13:55)
• The radio allowed truckers to warn each other about speed traps and eventually to coordinate "convoys," joint resistance packs that sped together and evaded enforcement (14:14–14:59).

4. Truckers' Political Power: Strikes and Showdown with Government

• The episode covers the spontaneous 1973 trucker protests sparked by an individual action, which snowballed into national trucker shutdowns (15:22–16:19).
• These protests escalated into a nationwide strike in 1974, causing supply chains to collapse, panic buying, and even violence between striking and non-striking truckers (17:17–19:23).
• "We're staying here if it means our rig, our house, and everything else. We're not going back." – protesting trucker (17:42)

5. Writing and Releasing "Convoy"

• Fries and Davis, inspired by the CB lingo and real-world events, crafted "Convoy" as a story song about a cross-country, law-defying convoy of truckers (20:24–20:58).
• "We gotta make this sound really military—French horns, trumpets, a chorus... make a real production out of this." – Bill Fries (20:58)
• The song’s irresistible storytelling and up-to-the-minute references instantly resonated with DJs and listeners (21:35).

Chart Success and Truckers' Embrace

• "On the first day of 1976, this was the number one song on the Billboard pop charts as well as the country charts. It was number one in Great Britain. It was number one in Australia. It was unbelievable." – Bill Fries (22:07)
• Truckers adopted the song as an anthem, sending in poetry and letters (22:38).

6. The "Convoy" Craze and Cultural Aftershocks

• "Convoy" sparked a mass interest in CB radios by the general public. Sales soared, including signature models (24:00).
• Many copycat songs followed, including Red Sovine's "Teddy Bear" and Merle Haggard & Leona Williams' "The Bull and the Beaver" (24:39–25:19).
• Holloywood soon caught on, producing films and TV shows centred around CB culture ("Dukes of Hazzard," "Convoy," the movie) (25:23).

7. Closing the C.W. McCall Chapter

• With the end of the CB craze, Fries stepped away from music and advertising, moving to Colorado and later becoming mayor of Ouray (26:24).
• Chip Davis used his royalties to launch Mannheim Steamroller, reusing many of the same musicians (27:05).
  • "The C.W. McCall Band and Mannheim Steamroller were the same people." – Chip Davis (27:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Pop Appeal of Truckers:
  "We heard people say this is almost like an anthem for us, national anthem for truckers."
  – Bill Fries (22:31)
• On Artistic Intent:
  "No, this was pure entertainment... except for the governors of New Jersey and Iowa wanted the song banned because they're breaking the law. But that even made it sell even more."
  – Bill Fries (23:25)
• On Irony in Career:
  "At one point in time, I made a statement: there’s two things I’ll probably never do in my life—live in Nebraska and write country music. And the next thing I knew, I was living in Nebraska writing country music."
  – Chip Davis (27:51)
• Episode Closer (CB Radio-Style Sign-Off):
  "Well, mercy sakes, good buddy, we’re gonna back on out of here. So keep the bugs off your glass and the bears off your tail. We’ll catch you on the flip flop. This here's a rubber duck on the side. We gone

Transcript

[Narrator/Reporter]

You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.

[Chris Mullanfi]

Hey there, Hit Parade listeners, it's Chris Mullanfi. While we work on our next episode, I've got something special for you today. It's a music centric episode of one of my favorite Slate podcasts, Decoder Ring, hosted by Willa Paskin. If you haven't heard Decoder Ring yet, you're missing out. Each episode cracks a cultural mystery by examining its surprising history and why it still matters today. Their most recent episode, the one you'll be hearing now, is all about the novelty hit Convoy by C.W. mcCall, a number one hit on the Hot 100 in January of 1976 and the cultural high watermark of the CB radio fad. Thanks to the recent trucker protests in Canada, Convoy has been back in the zeitgeist lately. And in this Dakota Ring episode, Slate's Evan Chung digs into the fascinating backstory of this song and why it's kept on Truckin all these years later. We'll be back with a new episode of Hit Parade next week. In the meantime, I hope you'll subscribe to Decoder Ring wherever you listen. And now I'll hand over the mic to my fellow host, Willa Paskin.

[Willa Paskin]

Earlier this year, we got an email from a listener suggesting a potential topic for the show. What was the deal with the boom in pop culture about truckers back in the 1970s? They were thinking of movies like the action comedy Smokey and the Bandit, which starred Burt Reynolds as a bootlegging truck driver outrunning the law. And that had been the second highest gross producing movie of 1977.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Breaker 1 9, breaker 1 9.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I see a portable gas station up ahead of me.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Do you copy? Hey, is this a bandit?

[Narrator/Reporter]

This is Mr. B and I'm gear jamming this rolling refinery. You got another Smokey on the rubber? This is a bandit, son.

[Willa Paskin]

But Smokey and its two sequels are just the most famous examples of this micro trend. There was also the movie White Line Fever, about an independent trucker who takes on the industry, and 1978's Convoy, which was directed by Sam Peckinpah and starred Chris Kristoff for sin.

[Evan Chung]

I am the Lord, don't you understand?

[Narrator/Reporter]

I represent the law. We'll piss on you and piss on your law.

[Willa Paskin]

And then there's what Convoy. The movie was based on a hit song of the same name. In the song by an artist named C.W. mcCall, a trucker joins up with hundreds of other trucks to blast across the country, tangling with the National Guard and other authorities. Along the way.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

By the time we got into Tulsa town we had 85 trucks in all. But there's a roadblock up on the ground. Clover Leaf and them Bears is wall to wall.

[Willa Paskin]

Convoy was a number one hit single in 1976, like number one on the Billboard Hot 100. And more than 45 years later, this novelty single is back in the Zeitgeist.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Come join our Canadian convoy Ain't nothing getting in our way Come on join our Canadian convoy, you.

[Willa Paskin]

That's one of a few modified cover versions inspired by the recent protests in Canada overnight.

[Chris Mullanfi]

Canadian police trying to clear out this.

[Chip Davis]

Trucker led protest blocking the Ambassador Bridge.

[Evan Chung]

By protesters angry about vaccine mandates.

[Willa Paskin]

The original convoy is also all over protesters, YouTube videos and social media posts. And it all made me wonder how did this odd song come to exist in the first place? And what had it been trying to say? Turns out I knew just the guy to ask. This is Decoder Ring and I'm Willa Paskin. For this episode, we've updated a story that originally aired in 2017, but that could not be more relevant. It's from Slate producer Evan Chung, who's gonna take us through the history of this bizarre number one smash and an artifact from a time when truckers were also at the center of the culture. It touches on advertising, hamburger buns and speed limits, but also global conflicts, skyrocketing gas prices, and aggrieved, protesting truck drivers. So today on Decoder Ring, we got ourselves a convoy. Like I said, Evan Chung reported and produced this story and he's going to take it from here.

[Evan Chung]

The story of convoy begins in 1972, not in a Nashville recording studio, but in a Nebraska advertising agency.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

I didn't ever set out to be a country music performer. I had no idea I was going to do that.

[Evan Chung]

Bill Fries was an art director working on a new TV campaign when he happened to meet a young touring musician named Chip Davis and offered him a job.

[Chip Davis]

I ended up moving to Omaha to become a jingle writer at a recording studio here, said Chip.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

The first job I have for you is to write the background music for these television commercials for a little known bread product up in Sioux City, Iowa called Old Home Bread.

[Evan Chung]

Old Home Bread was a brand of hamburger buns, rolls, donuts, you name it. Bill pitched them the idea of a folksy series of musical TV commercials that had an ongoing storyline like a country music soap opera.

[Chip Davis]

It evolved around a couple of characters named CW and Mavis. Mavis was like a gum chewing waitress at some little tiny cafe in Pisgah Iowa. And CW Was a truck driver and would stop in there, and they sort of had a little love affair going on.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Now, we've been every place between here and South Sioux, and we've seen us at truck stop in Waitress, too. But this gal's built like a burlap bag full of bobcats. She's got it together.

[Evan Chung]

This romance developed over the course of years. 2012 commercials, from a meet cute at the diner to a date at the Fireman's Ball. Until finally, CW Proposes to Mavis.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

I says that little old ring cost a lot of bread. And from there on out, nothing else was said.

[Evan Chung]

Chip composed the music, while Bill wrote the talking blues lyrics and voiced the character of C.W. mcCall himself. The commercials aired in just a handful of states. Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas. But as each new spot aired and the romance plot picked up, the campaign became a local phenomenon.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Fan club sprung up. CW Fan clubs and Mavis Fan Club. It was just unreal.

[Chip Davis]

The ads became so popular that they actually had to put listings in the TV Guide as to when the spots were coming on.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

We struck something there, kind of down home reality. People identified with these characters.

[Evan Chung]

Bill and Chip decided to release the music from the bread commercials as an actual single. They recorded it at CHIP Studio, credited the song to the C.W. mcCall character and put it out locally under the title the Old Home Filler up and Keep on a Truckin Cafe.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

It never closes Old Home Filler up.

If you own a truckin cafe.

[Chip Davis]

We put that out, and within a matter of just weeks, it started getting so much jukebox play and all that. And we were. By the way, that was one of my very first ad campaigns. I got all the guys from the recording studio, got them a bunch of quarters, and we'd all go out on like, a Friday night, run around and plug the jukeboxes and all the bars in Omaha, and hit five plays of the same song and then hit the road and go to the next bar.

[Evan Chung]

That marketing campaign apparently worked because it sold 30,000 copies in the Midwest, prompting MGM Records to release it to a national audience.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Oh, God, if it didn't get in on the country charts. Billboard charts, number 13, or something like that.

[Chip Davis]

Wow.

[Evan Chung]

That gave Bill and Chip the opportunity to record an entire album under the C.W. mcCall name. An album of songs all about truck driving. But while C.W. mcCall, the character, was a trucker, neither of the songwriters had any experience themselves.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Of course, I was not a truck driver, but I am a writer and I write about trucks.

[Evan Chung]

And at that time, truck driving offered them plenty of material to write about. Truckers were becoming key figures in an event that was engulfing the the oil crisis. In October 1973, war broke out between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Dawn this morning.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

The Israeli and Syrian armies have been.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Slugging it out here, high up on.

[Evan Chung]

The Golan mountains, the US provided military support to Israel. In retaliation, the Arab nation severely cut back on their oil exports.

[Narrator/Reporter]

They will reduce oil production by 5% a month until the Israelis withdraw from occupied territories. If the Arab countries keep that pledge, it would reduce their production by almost 50% in one year.

[Evan Chung]

The oil embargo made gas supplies in the US go way down and gas prices go way up, almost doubling. Drivers would wait in four or five hour lines just to get a few gallons, often running out of gas while in the line. And a lot of Americans saw this as evidence that the country was coming undone.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

There is only so much oil in the ground. Sooner or later there won't be much around.

[Evan Chung]

The message of this song by Tower of Power that oil is a limited resource for a lot of people. That was a new concept and you.

[Meg Jacobs]

Have to understand the context of this Is Americans living in this world where cars were like living rooms on wheels.

[Evan Chung]

That's Meg Jacobs. She's an historian at Princeton and the author of a book about the oil crisis called Panic at the pump.

[Meg Jacobs]

The early 70s is when cars are the biggest and least fuel efficient that they become because there's a sense that we don't have to worry about gas. So it's a fundamental shock to our self perception.

[Evan Chung]

The Nixon administration was asking the public to make big sacrifices, saying that conserving gas was patriotic. Amoco enlisted Johnny Cash to urge Americans to drive less.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But until the short of Jesus, it's up to all of us to make.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

What there is go further.

[Narrator/Reporter]

There's a shortage of energy, but not of the American spirit.

[Evan Chung]

But these sacrifices weren't just voluntary.

[Meg Jacobs]

You have gas stations that are closed on Sunday. You can get it only depending on the last digit of your license plate.

[Evan Chung]

And most infamously, President Nixon proposed lowering the speed limit on all highways to 55 miles per hour to conserve fuel. Many states did right away. This would anger millions of American drivers for years, notably Sammy Hagar.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

I can't drive 55.

[Meg Jacobs]

So that's a very real infringement. As Americans conceive of their rights to cheap oil and all the driving they want to do, that's a very real infringement on that sense of who they are.

[Evan Chung]

And it was truck drivers who felt the effect of the speed Limit laws. The most, especially the independent ones who didn't work for big companies or belonged to the union. Their earnings depended on getting places as fast as possible.

[Meg Jacobs]

They had to pay more for the diesel. When they fueled up, there was less of it available, and they now had to abide by a 55 mile per hour speed limit. And this pushed them really over the edge.

[Evan Chung]

So these drivers came up with ways to get around the limit, aided by a ubiquitous piece of trucker gear, the citizens band radio. Citizens band radios, or CBs, are walkie talkie like devices. They allow you to converse with other people over certain radio frequencies. And they're small enough to fit in the cab of a truck. So truckers could talk with each other while on the go.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Oh, it's clean and green all the way back to that Route 16.

[Evan Chung]

Truckers constructed a whole culture around CB radios, and that caught the attention of Bill Friess and Chip Davis, the C.W. mcCall musicians.

[Chip Davis]

Bill had gotten a CB and had it in his jeep. And he'd tell me, he'd call me up and go, you ought to hear this. It sounds like a war going on. They're using all these unique names. They call them handles.

[Meg Jacobs]

Big, sassy, dopey, Diesel. They all sort of have these names that they adopt and appropriate.

[Chip Davis]

My handle was Music man.

[Evan Chung]

Truckers developed an entire Seabee specific language.

[Chip Davis]

Breaker, breaker there one night and it hears a music man calling for the.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Rubber duck over everybody said 10, 4 instead of yes.

[Evan Chung]

Los Angeles became Shakytown because of the earthquakes. State troopers became Smokies because they wore.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

These hats like Smokey the Bear.

[Evan Chung]

And that hated 55 mile an hour speed limit had a nickname too.

[Chip Davis]

They called it double nickels. 55 double nickels.

[Evan Chung]

Speaking in this country code, truckers used their radios to coordinate resistance to the double nickel speed limit. They would warn each other over the airwaves of upcoming speed traps.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Okay, you've got two smokies parked right.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

On the west side of the southbound highway.

[Evan Chung]

But they also used CB radios to form tightly packed blocks of trucks known as convoys. A trucker would get on the radio and say to all the other nearby trucks, hey, let's all drive together as a pack. Suddenly, the truckers had strength in numbers. As a group, they could drive as fast as possible. The trucks on the inside of the convoy were completely shielded, and there was very little the cops could do.

[Meg Jacobs]

So what had been just a way to alert fellow drivers to police cars or speed traps or just to break up the monotony of the drive now took on this sort of political cast.

[Evan Chung]

As the oil crisis entered its third month, the drivers demonstrated just how much political power those gadgets in their truck cabs held.

[Narrator/Reporter]

A high percentage of the nation's over the road trucks are operated by self employed drivers. Today they began demonstrating their anger on signal by citizens band radio. They drove onto the highway and stopped.

[Evan Chung]

It all started with a lone fed up truck driver in Pennsylvania. On December 4, 1973, J.W. river Rat Edwards parked his rig in protest in the middle of the interstate. It was a spontaneous one man demonstration. But another trucker heard what he was doing on the CB and parked right next to him. Then another truck joined in, and then another, and another.

[Narrator/Reporter]

For nearly five hours, their lights extended up to 10 miles in either direction. Hundreds of trucks and cars brought to a standstill on Interstate 80.

[Evan Chung]

Word spread to other truckers across the country via the CB channels and before long you had a nationwide convoy of parked trucks.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The Ohio Turnpike was empty for miles between Cleveland and Toledo. The reason? A blockade. Seven miles. A thousand trucks stopped in their tracks blocking the highway and the road shoulder.

[Evan Chung]

There were simultaneous shutdowns in York, New New Jersey, Tennessee, Arkansas and Indiana. Some passenger cars were left trapped on the highway overnight.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

I can't move.

[Narrator/Reporter]

You fellas have taken over the road. And us private people, we suffer too. We're doing it for you.

[Evan Chung]

But this one day trucker blockade didn't deter President Nixon. A month later he signed a law lowering the speed limit to 55 miles an hour on all national highways. And that did not go down well.

[Meg Jacobs]

The truckers start to warn if you don't do something to sort of alleviate our situation, if you don't repeal the 55 mile per hour speed limit, roll back prices at the pump, we're going to shut the country down. We're going to bring the country to its knees.

[Evan Chung]

And it wouldn't be long before the truckers delivered on their. On January 31, 1974, independent truck drivers across the country went on strike.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

I'm not moving my rig one foot.

[Narrator/Reporter]

All we getting is promises, promises, but nothing. No action whatsoever. We're staying here. If it means our river, our houses and everything else, we're not going back.

[Evan Chung]

For 11 days they parked their trucks and refused to transport goods, bringing the nation's supply chain to a standstill.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The American Meat Institute in Chicago says that unless the walkout is settled by the weekend, nearly all of the nation's meat packers and processors will have to shut down.

[Meg Jacobs]

So what you have is citrus rotting on the vine in Florida and California, you have livestock not going to market and you have bare shelves in supermarkets. On the East Coast.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

It took one weekend of panic buying to reduce Jamestown's food supplies to near zero.

[Meg Jacobs]

They not only stopped transporting the goods, but they also magnified the impact of the gas shortage by basically blockading fueling stations. So that really had this ripple effect across the whole economy.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Yes, we are on the verge of economic collapse, but again, what are you going to do about it? It is out of our hands.

[Evan Chung]

But some truckers weren't willing to give up a paycheck. So they kept on driving and faced retaliation from the truckers who were on strike.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Drivers in at least eight states were injured either by sniper's bullets or objects thrown at trucks. One truck driver was shot to death in Delaware. That's the second death related to, to the shutdown. There are truckers eating inside this restaurant right now. But they wouldn't talk to us on camera because they said if they did tonight, they might be the ones dead in the ditch.

[Evan Chung]

The President demonized the truck drivers as violent desperados.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The Nixon administration made clear today that it is now preparing to use military force if necessary, to keep trucks moving.

[Evan Chung]

But it was Nixon who got most of the blame for the whole mess. For supposedly manufacturing an oil crisis.

[Meg Jacobs]

The prevailing sentiment was that this was not triggered by international affairs, but in fact was a hoax, an artificial conspiracy by the oil companies just to jack up prices.

[Evan Chung]

Many people viewed the truck drivers as romantic, modern cowboy figures bravely standing up for their own rights.

[Meg Jacobs]

They tapped into the frustration that millions and millions of Americans were experiencing already on the gas lines.

[Evan Chung]

That sentiment left an opening, an opening for a song about truckers banding together to stick it to the man to become a hit. And that is where convoy comes in.

[Chip Davis]

Bill is just fascinated by it. As to this big movement out there on the road.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

The facts presented themselves to us by what was happening out there on the highway.

[Evan Chung]

Bill Freese and Chip Davis were listening to the CB radio, looking for inspiration for a song for their truck driving character, C.W. mcCall. And they found it. Amid all the trucker resistance, Bill took all the lingo he'd picked up from the CB channels and wrote the lyrics to a story song about a trucker with the handle Rubber Duck, who picks up more and more trucks via the CB radio to form a giant convoy stretching from coast to coast, pursued by helicopters and the National Guard.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

I said to Chip, we gotta make this sound really military, like we gotta have some horns, French horns, trumpets and a chorus and make a real Production.

Number out of this breaker 1:9. This here's a rubber duck. You got a copy on me, Big Ben?

[Narrator/Reporter]

Come on.

[Chip Davis]

Yeah.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

10 4, Big Ben. For sure, for sure. By golly, it's clean clear to flag town. Come on. Yeah, it's a big ten four there, Big Ben. Yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive. Looks like we've got us a convoy.

As soon as the DJs around the country played this thing, the switchboards lit up and everybody wanted to hear it again.

I says, pig Pen, this here's a rubber duck. And I'm about to put the hammer down.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Join our con.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

This year, and I'd be dog gone to it. On the first day of 1976, this was the number one song on the Billboard pop charts as well as the country charts. It was number one in Great Britain. It was number one in Australia. It was number one in Canada. It was unbelievable.

[Chip Davis]

Well, I'd say I was stunned.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

We heard people say that this is almost like an anthem for us, national anthem for truckers.

[Chip Davis]

We got trucker poetry. I think they sent in a lot of their poetry hoping that maybe we'd set it to song.

[Evan Chung]

It's easy to see why Convoy would appeal to the truck drivers who had just been on strike and how it could be adopted by decades later by the Canadian Freedom Convoy. The song laughs at authority and imagines an aggressive confrontation with government security forces.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

By the time we hit that Chi town, them bears was a getting smart. They brought up some reinforcements from the Illinois's National Guard. There's armored cars and tanks and jeeps and rigs of every size. Yeah, them chicken coops was full of bears and choppers fell to.

[Evan Chung]

But Bill Freeze insisted the Convoy was never intended to be a political statement in favor of one side or another.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

No, this was pure entertainment, and I make that very clear. Except for the governors of New Jersey and Iowa wanted the song band because they're breaking the law. But that even made it sell even more.

[Evan Chung]

The initial success of Convoy went way beyond record sales. It kicked off a whole CB radio craze. Sales of CB radios skyrocketed, and not just to truckers, but to the general public. They were intrigued by the song and by the lingo it used.

[Narrator/Reporter]

By 1979, about half of the cars and trucks on the nation's highways will be equipped with CB units.

[Evan Chung]

Four to 500,000 new radios were sold each each month in the year after Convoy was released, including a C.W. mcCall signature model. And before long, C.W. mcCall wouldn't be the only trucker character with a song on the charts. Dozens of copycat songs about CB radios were released. Red Sovine hit the top 40 with an unbelievably maudlin tearjerker of a story song called Teddy Bear, about a little boy calling out to truckers and using the CB radio of his dead father.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

Dad had a wreck about a month ago. He was trying to get home in a blinding snow. Mom has to work now to make ends meet and I'm not much help with my two crippled feet.

[Evan Chung]

In a very different vein was Merle Haggard and Leona Williams duet about two truckers hooking up using the ever so subtle CB handles of the Bull and the Beaver.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

You've got the Bull of the woods.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

You'Ve got the Beaver from Missouri.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

We can't get nothing done on this CB You've got the Bull of the.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Woods, you've got the Beaver from Missouri.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

We are get together, you and me.

[Evan Chung]

Hollywood got in on the craze too, with a ton of CB inspired movies and TV shows. This is when you get the Dukes of Hazzard and when Smoking the Bandit arrives in theaters, soon to be followed by Convoy, the movie nothing but a two bit Lyin Cheatin Law, Breaking Trucker.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

What the hell are you?

[Evan Chung]

In time, of course, the CB radio craze came to an end and so did the musical career of the fictional bread commercial character C.W. mcCall. There was a sequel to Convoy called Round the World with the Rubber Duck, which bizarrely takes the Convoy to the high seas. There were six albums recorded for the C.W. mcCall character in the 70s. Then Bill Freese, the ad exec turned lyricist and vocalist, grew tired of it all. So he quit both advertising and music.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

People in the business were just amazed. Well, why don't you take this another step? You know, make another number one record? I'm not interested in that.

[Evan Chung]

Instead, Bill moved to Ouray, Colorado and served three terms as the town's mayor. He stayed in Ouray until he died just recently in April 2022 at the age of 93. As for chip Davis, the composer, he was able to quit his day job as a jingle writer and use his C.W. mcCall royalty money to fund a musical endeavor of his own.

[Chip Davis]

I had another project going on simultaneously called Mannheim Steamroller.

[Evan Chung]

Yes, that's right. Chip Davis is the same Chip Davis who's the mastermind behind Mannheim Steamroller, the classical rock new age hybrid band best known for its mega selling Christmas albums. In fact, the C.W. mcCall Band and Mannheim Steamroller were the same people.

[Chip Davis]

We used to wear blue jeans with tails, coats for the Mannheim Steamroller part. And then we'd take off the tails, coats and put on a blue jean jacket. And then we were a country band. And we don't think the audience ever caught on that it was the same guys.

[Evan Chung]

And that's how we get from local bread commercials to the Middle east to an international number one single, to a cultural phenomenon, to Manheim's Steamroller, all starting with a couple of advertising guys in Omaha who, by the way, never really liked country music.

[Chip Davis]

At one point in time, I made a statement. I said, there's two things I'll probably never do in my life, and one is live in Nebraska, and one is write country music. And the next thing I knew, I was living in Nebraska writing country music. It was kind of really crazy.

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

I says, pig pen, this here's a rubber duck we just ain't going to pay no toll so we crashed the gate doing 98 I says, let them truckers roll 104 we got a mighty.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Conor out into the night yeah, we got a mighty Congo Ain't she a beautiful sight?

[Bill Fries (C.W. McCall)]

All right, 10 4. Big Ben, what's your 20?

Omaha ought to know what's good at.

Them hogs out there for sure. Well, mercy sakes, good buddy, we going to back on out of here. So keep the bucks off your glass and the bears off your tail. We'll catch you on the flip flop. This here's a rubber duck on the side. We gone.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Bye. Bye.

[Willa Paskin]

This is Decoder Ring.

[Evan Chung]

I'm Evan Chum.

[Willa Paskin]

And I'm Willa Paskin. An earlier version of the story appeared on Sound opinions and on Studio360. A really big thank you to PRX and our listener, Taylor Chapman, who wrote in with a question. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin. This episode was written and produced by Evan Chung with producing help from Elizabeth Nakano. Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our technical director. If you're a fan of Decoder Ring, please sign up for Slate plus. Slate plus members get to listen to this show without any ads and they're supporting the work that we do. Members will also get to hear a special behind the scenes episode with me at the end of the season. So Please go to slate.com decoder+ to sign up now. We really appreciate your support. You can find me on Twitter at Willa Paskin. And if you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us@decodering slate.com if you haven't yet. Please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

[Various Truckers/CB Radio Voices]

Sam.