You could say he was cashing in on a fad, and who can blame him for that?Jay Huguely was working as an advertising executive in South Carolina when trucker songs became popular on the country and western airwaves. C.W. McCall, an ad man himself, took "Convoy" to No. 1 at the end of 1975, and Red Sovine had a chart-topper of his own with "Phantom 309" later in 1976.
In between them, Huguely became Cledus Maggard and the Citizen's Band (C.B., get it?) And dad gum if he didn't go all the way to the top with "The White Knight." The Mercury label even states that the record was "produced by Leslie Advertising Agency."
"The White Knight" entered the Billboard chart in January of 1976 and made it to the summit on Valentine's Day. How sweet.
I say you can't blame him for capitalizing on a fad, but it's somehow reassuring to know that the song was only No. 1 for a week before Waylon & Willie put a stop to the nonsense with "Good Hearted Woman."
Now there was a country song.
During the CB radio craze I was living in rural Florida about an hour north of Tampa, close to I-75. I have some wild memories of that period, including one afternoon that involved finding a lot of mushrooms in a cow pasture and chatting on the radio with truckers who were passing through.
ReplyDeleteMy sibs and I used to sit in our dad's pickup in the driveway, listening on his CB radio to the truckers rolling past Tallahassee on I-10 ...
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