William's Song a Day Blog - est. September 2007

Well, this is the last song of the truck driving song theme week. I have posted songs about bootleggers, psychopath truck drivers, guys wanting not to be on the road/wanting to be with the ones they love, and ghost truckers. I thought it fitting to end the week in space with Deep Purple's Space Truckin' . I love the effect that they created by playing Jon Lord's Hammond organ through a distorted guitar amp; just awesome! What is odd about this song is that it is very popular and yet has Sci-Fi lyrics, which almost never happens. In the song they talk about trucking and having fun across the galaxy and universe. Anyway, an excellent song to wrap up the truck driving week with. Hear Space Truckin' on YouTube. There are quite a few more live videos on YouTube as well. +

            I don't believe that a truck driving song week would be complete without this one. The song is about a truck driver being away from his family. The family worrying about him and praying for his safe return home; which he does make it home. What I really find amazing about this song is the tightness of the harmonies; the musicianship is quite good as well. I can still remember when I first heard it on the radio, I was about five years old. At this time I loved any songs about trucks, trains or other modes of transportation. I fell in love with it and when I found this record at the Music Express store in the mall and I hounded my mother until she bought it. Here is the studio version on YouTube. Here is a live performance on YouTube. +

Continuing my truck driving song week, I decided on Smokey Mountain Rain by Ronnie Milsap. A very good song about being on the road away from your love and the person in the song is trying to find her after she had left. The verses are very low key and smooth but what really is excellent about this song is the chorus. This song has two really prominent hooks: the transition between the verse and chorus and the low notes in the chorus on the piano to signify thunder. Oddly enough, that "thunder" was Elvis Presley's doing. I heard in an interview with Ronnie Milsap that the idea came when playing piano with Elvis on the song Kentucky Rain that Elvis told him to make some thunder on the lower keys; he decided to put it into this song as well. Hear Smokey Mountain Rain on YouTube. Here is a live performance on YouTube. +

For today's pick on my theme week I am choosing Eddie Rabbitt's Driving My Life Away . This song is off of the Horizon album, which is thought of as his "Rockabilly" album. My siblings and I almost wore this record out when we were very young; we really liked this track and the song 747 . What I really like about this song is the rapid-fire lyrics and the musicianship, which is incredible. This is a very good album and song from an excellent artist; very much a perfect track for my week of truck driving music. Here is the studio version on YouTube. Here is a live performance on YouTube. +

Continuing my Truck Driving Song week I decided on this song I came to love when I was quite a bit younger. The song is a ghost story about a truck roaming the highways. In the story Phantom 309 crashed while avoiding hitting a school bus and the driver, Big Joe ends up getting killed. The person who is the main part of the story is hitching a ride in a rainstorm and a trucker comes by and takes him to a restaurant to warm up, but the trucker leaves. The people there tell him that he took a ride with ghost. A very fun song to listen to and again is another song that is sung talksinging. Here is the studio version on YouTube. +

After picking East Bound and Down by Jerry Reed yesterday, I decided to pick songs on a theme this week. This is fun song to listen to about a bunch of outlaw truckers busting their way through the fuzz to get to their destination. In a lot of C.W. McCall's work he talksings and this one is done as if it was a conversation going over the CB radio. The choruses, in my opinion leave something to be desired and come off a bit cheesy. The music is good, however the song focuses on the vocals almost completely so the musicianship takes a bit of a hit but is still pretty good. Here is the studio version on YouTube. Hear the British version/parody of Convoy on YouTube. +

This is the theme song from the movie Smokey and the Bandit ; I watched it a lot growing up and I almost wore the videodisc of it out. For those unfamiliar with the medium, a videodisc is an obsolete movie medium that is vinyl and plays like a record; after countless times of play it usually began to skip pretty bad. The best actor in the movie, in my opinion, was Jackie Gleason; his one-liners and foul language really was the hook of the movie; Jerry Reed played the role of Cletus or "Snow Man" in the movie as well. The song itself is a fairly fast toe-tapper; Jerry Reed's vocals and guitar work are excellent in this song. Here is the studio version on YouTube. Here is an amazing live performance on YouTube. +