Dave Dudley Truck driving singer

 Dave Dudley was a country singer whose specialty was trucking songs.  Country music has traditionally focused on occupations that were common among the American working men (and women).  Some of the favourite ones were train songs.  In the 1920s and 30s, working men rode around the country on trains, looking for work.. or worked building and repairing trains and rail roads.. In spite of poverty and hardship, there was an excitement about travelling, and hearing songs about it appealed to the listening public....Boxcar Willie sang about hoboes who travelled and lived rough and poor... and most of his songs were train songs. 

Many country singers of the older generation came from a farming background such as Loretta Lynn, and Johnny Cash whose fathers were sharecroppers or farmers. They often had other work on the side.  Loretta's father worked in a mine and did some farming and in later life, he gave up mining and ran a small store. 

Truck driving was another occupation for working men, and so trucking songs became popular.  Truck driving was at first a male job, drivers would be away from home for long periods of time, working hard, a life of bars, truck stops and cafes and getting away from their wives.  Dave Dudley recorded Six Days on the Road, in 1963 and it became a huge hit.  Shel Silverstein wrote a parody of the song called "6 Days back at home" which detailed the problems of a driver on his time off, his being stuck at home, listening to a nagging wife, noisy kids and having to do jobs around the house and longing for the companionship of the road... However the original song notes that truck driving while it has its freedom and fun, is a hard life, with trucks needing mechanical repairs, having to dodge police ("Smokies") and problems with delays and late deliveries.  The song refers to drivers "taking little while pills" to keep awake while driving...(which was cut in some versions) and being away from his woman and wondering if he should find another girl but feeling that it wasn't "right"....

Dave was born David Darwin Pedruska in Wisconsin in 1928, and he initially became a baseball player.  He played a few years and then had an arm injury which led him to seek other work.  He then became a country singer in the late 1950s.  In 1960 he was involved in a car accident which set back his career but in 1963, "Six Days on the Road" became a huge hit for him.  It was written by Earl Green and Carl Montgomery.  He had a lot of popularity in the 1960s and 70s but it began to fade by the 1980s.  He was well liked in Europe though, particularly in the UK and Germany and he performed there... As his recording and performing career began to wind down, he went into business, buying a lake resort which he ran with his wife Marie. He didn't achieve the long running success of artists like Johnny Cash who was still doing novel and exciting work up to the time of his death....but he had a solid career.  He died in Wisconsin in 2003, at the age of 75.