“Ah, breaker one-nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck. You got a copy on me, Pig Pen, c’mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it’s clean clear to Flag Town, c’mon. Yeah, that’s a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy!” With those immortal words, C.W. McCall began his biggest hit song titled Convoy, which we all know (and most love). C.W. McCall was born William (Bill) Dale Fries November 15, 1928, in Audubon, Iowa to a musically inclined family where he first performed at age 3 in a talent show. After briefly attending the Fine Arts School at the University of Iowa, he started working as a commercial artist in Omaha, Nebraska. On February 15, 1952, he married Rena Jayne Bonnema. In 1973 Bill wrote an award-winning TV ad campaign that featured a truck driver named C.W. McCall. Bill explained that the name McCall came from a McCall’s magazine on his desk and C.W. was for his love of country western music. This led to a recording contract from the MGM label. On the heels of the CB radio craze of the 1970s, the song “Convoy” was released in 1975. Convoy spent six weeks at number one, both on the country and pop charts, and was an international success, as well. C.W. reworked the lyrics for the 1978 movie Convoy. The movie is a favorite to many truckers, not for the plot or acting, but for the trucks in the cast, which were semis that their fathers and grandfathers drove (and may still have). The master storyteller had a string of hit songs in his six original albums. In 1979, C.W. retired from touring to his summer home in Ouray, Colorado, where he was elected mayor in 1986. He successfully secured funding for a new city hall that had burnt down in 1950. In a recent interview in February 2022, Bill gave his blessing for the use of his song Convoy to be used in the Freedom Convoy protests in Canada. Bill and Rena were married for 70 years in February. Sadly, on April 1, 2022, Bill lost his battle with cancer at the age of 93. “Let them truckers roll, 10-4!”
