From `Six Days On The Road' to `Truck Drivin' Son-Of-A-Gun': The Biggest Hits From Dave Dudley, the Father of Truck-Driving Country Music, on New `Best Of' Compilation.

Entertainment Editors & Music/Retail Writers

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Aug. 6, 2002

Until the interstate highway building boom of the 1950s, the longhaul trucker did not exist. And until Dave Dudley, there was no such thing as a truck-driving song. Until he jackknifed country music in 1963 with his classic "Six Days On The Road," country songs were about horses, not big rigs. His hammer-down hits for Mercury Records spanned the good-ole-boy workin' man range of subject matter, but his salutes to the gear jockeys piloting their 18-wheelers made him the father of truck-driving country. Dudley was the true King of the Road.

"The Best Of Dave Dudley" edition of "20th Century Masters/The Millennium Collection" (Mercury Nashville/UME), released September 10, 2002, brings together Dudley's dozen best recordings from his 10-year heyday on the label, nine of them country Top 10s, another Top 20 and a pair of re-recordings of two earlier Top 10s, each digitally remastered.

Dudley's journey got off to a slow start; it took a decade of performing before he nailed his first country charter in 1961. Then two years later, Cajun star Jimmy C. Newman handed Dudley his breakthrough tune at the Grand Ole Opry when he threw a tape of a song from two other writers into his guitar case. "Six Days On The Road" peaked at #2 country and crossed over to the pop Top 40. When "Cowboy Boots" also went country Top 10, Mercury signed Dudley. ("The Best Of Dave Dudley" features both songs in re-recordings for his 1964 debut album "Songs About The Working Man.")

His first single for the label, "Last Day In The Mines," was written by his manager, Jimmy Key, and hit #7. But it was another songwriter with whom Dudley would most notably collaborate -- Tom T. Hall. Dudley's recording of Hall's hilarious "Mad" in 1964 reached #6, his patriotic "What We're Fighting For" #4 the next year and "The Pool Shark" #1 in 1970, helping to establish Hall as one of the greatest songwriters in Americana. In addition, Tom T.'s future wife Dixie Deen co-wrote Dudley's rumbling 1965 #3 smash "Truck Drivin' Son-Of-A-Gun," and Dave and Tom co-wrote 1968's #10 "There Ain't No Easy Run."

Key would also contribute that year's tender #10 ballad "Please Let Me Prove (My Love For You)." Ex-rockabilly wildman Ronnie Self penned the crazily careening 1965 #15 hit "Two Six Packs Away." Dudley himself wrote his 1971 hits "Comin' Down" and "Fly Away Again," each a country #8.

Though his hits hit a roadblock and his Mercury years came to an end in 1973, Dudley remained a concert draw both in the U.S. and Europe throughout the '80s and '90s. Today, still recording, he continues to be heard wherever truckers are heroes.

The series "20th Century Masters/The Millennium Collection" features new "best of" albums from the most significant music artists of the past century.