Yesterday’s subject wasn’t the best-known novelty trucker of the 1970s: that title belongs to one Chatsworth Warrington McCall and his 1976 hit “Convoy”!

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Okay, I made up the Chatsworth bit, “C.W.” doesn’t stand for anything, it was just a name for an character concocted by adman William “Bill” Fries for an Old Home Bread campaign. Like the Muppets before him and Ernest P. Worrell after, C.W. made the move from advertising to entertainment people theoretically pay for! And you all laughed at Cavemen! Or didn’t laugh at it, I guess. Or watch it.

Anyway, “Convoy” is a well-known song, and I have subjected many rooms to karaoke renditions of it. It’s shrugged off as a goofy country novelty song, but listen to it: really listen. It’s basically a song about taking arms against government agents and committing acts of “terrorism” against an unjust state.

Perhaps uncomfortable with such politically charged material, McCall dialed it back for the sequel, “Around the World with the Rubber Duck”. It picks up where “Convoy” left off, with the Convoy engaged in a high speed showdown with the fuzz at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The crew’s only choice was to somehow convert their diesel demons into amphibious crafts, and truck all over this globe of ours. This allows Fries to perform a number of borderline offensive ethnic accents, but even he seems aware of the absurdity. Listen to the backing vocals to the second verse:

Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! This is dumb! Dumb! Dumb!

That’s okay, partner! “C.W. McCall” has a lot of other truckin’ songs out there, and even some non-truck songs like “Columbine”, a 1970s ode to a sleepy mountain hamlet that takes on a new meaning today. But none of those tunes have the staying power of “Convoy”. Rubber Duckie, you truly are The One!

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