Dave Dudley – The Best Of Dave Dudley
Like a tractor hitched to a trailer, Dave Dudley and truck-driving songs will forever be linked. “Six Days On The Road”, a top-40 hit in the summer of 1963, established him as a star with a deep voice that brought to mind a big rig rumbling along the interstate. That song would become a truckers’ anthem and a country standard, with subsequent versions recorded by such artists as Hank Snow, Taj Mahal and Gram Parsons.
While such songs would always be a part of his repertoire, Dudley was more than a one-truck pony. This anthology’s twelve songs, recorded between the early 1960s and early 1970s, are a mix of country, honky-tonk and rockabilly styles that helped Dudley place 33 songs on the country singles charts during that period.
“Cowboy Boots” and “Mad” show a deft handling of lighter, novelty numbers and a use of vocal manipulation that evokes memories of the Big Bopper (who, like Dudley, got his start as a disc jockey). “Mad”, one of four songs written or co-written by Tom T. Hall, deals humorously with marital discord: “When she’s mad/I play a dangerous game/In the obituary column/They’ve already printed my name.”
On the serious side, Dudley deals successfully with working-class themes on “Last Day In The Mines” and “There Ain’t No Easy Run”, both top-10 country hits in the 1960s. Less successful is “What We’re Fighting For”, a pro-Vietnam War song that’s a little too simplistic, while “Comin’ Down” and “Fly Away Again” get bogged down by the use of strings.
Overall, Dudley, whose career as a baseball player was cut short by injury, delivers more hits than errors.