Dave Dudley: A Wonderful Artistic Career

It is not very common to find songs based on the lives of truck drivers. However, Dave Dudley was the exception to the lack of musical material about the important labor of this group of the society.

From his childhood, he dreamt of being a professional baseball player, but since he got an arm injury, he had to stop practicing it, and therefore, he started performing country music, thus forming the Dave Dudley Trio in 1953, which stayed together for about seven years because of its success. After moving to Minnesota, he formed the Country Gentlemen. Unfortunately, he had a car accident and was hospitalized for several months. In spite of this bad piece of news, the increased success in his career was evident with songs such as “Under the Cover of Night” and “Maybe I Do". Under the record label, Golden Wing, he released, “Six Days on the Road", which was originally recorded for a friend in 1961 and made him a star as soon as possible. In fact, this song told stories about how hard-working and hard-living people they are.

Other significant successes in his artistic career include “There Ain’t No Easy Run", "Truck Drivin’ Son-of-a-Gun", “Two Six Packs Away", “One More Mile", “Trucker’s Prayer” and “Truck Driver’s Waltz". In addition, the song, “The Pool Shark", became a number one country hit. He also recorded, “Day Drinkin'", a duet with Tom T. For Sun Records, he recorded “Rolaids, Doan’s Pills and Preparation H” in 1980, which gave him great success. In conclusion, Dudley was able to record over 70 albums; nevertheless, he could not recover some of his accomplishments and songs recorded with other artists. Finally, he died because of a heart attack.