Dick Curless – The Drag ‘Em Off The Interstate, Sock It To ‘Em Hits Of Dick Curless
One of the titans of trucker-country, Dick Curless was a curious bird: a proud but broken man; a high school dropout who could convey loneliness and regret with all-too-real eloquence; a Yank from Fort Fairfield, Maine, who used words like “tickled” and “reckon” in regular conversation. He died May 25, 1995, mere days after completing his final album Traveling Through (Rounder), leaving behind not only that fine record, but a varied catalogue of hits, misses and consistently ingenuous inbetweens.
Curless’ bellowing baritone has always drawn comparisons to Johnny Cash, and two of his early, definitive chart successes, “Traveling Man” and the epic “Tombstone Every Mile”, show those comparisons to be justified. But Curless had a much broader range than The Man In Black, and he could handle a delicate croon (“I Ain’t Got Nobody”) or a jaunty yodel (“Stonin’ Around “) with equal facility.
Curless was also possessed by his share of demons. He struggled with the bottle and, it would seem, bad taste for much of his public life. By the early ’70s, both of those incubuses were closing in on him. Compared to the weight and foreboding that his ’60s sides carried, the relative fluff of “Chick Inspector (That’s Where My Money Goes)” and “Last Blues Song” sound hapless, and terribly square. Shame, really.