Six Days on the Road
Encyclopedia
"Six Days on the Road" is an American song written by Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
songwriter Carl Montgomery and Earl Green, made originally famous by country music
singer Dave Dudley
. Originally released in 1963
, the song became a major hit that year and is often hailed as the definitive celebration of the American
truck driver
.
In 1997, the song was successfully covered by country music band Sawyer Brown
, who took the song into the Top 15 of the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks
chart.
, "Six Days on the Road" was not the first truck driving song; Malone credits "Truck Driver's Blues" by Cliff Bruner, released in 1940, with that distinction. "Nor is it necessarily the best," said Malone, citing songs such as "Truck Driving Man" by Terry Fell and "White Line Fever" by Merle Haggard and the Strangers
as songs that "would certainly rival it".
However, "Six Days," Malone continued, "set off a vogue for such songs" that continued for many years. "The trucking songs coincided with country music's growing identification as working man's music in the 1960s," he said. Many country music artists and bands—including Alabama
, Dick Curless
, Merle Haggard
, Kathy Mattea
, Ronnie Milsap
, Jerry Reed
, Del Reeves
, Dan Seals
, Red Simpson
, Red Sovine
, Joe Stampley
, C.W. McCall, Steve Earle
, among many others—recorded successful truck driving songs during the next 25 years. Several of those artists—Dudley included—became almost exclusively associated with songs about truck drivers and life on the road.
Dudley, stated Malone, "strikingly captures the sense of boredom, danger and swaggering masculinity that often accompanies long-distance truck driving. His macho interpretation, with its rock-and-roll overtones, is perfect for the song."
Allmusic writer Bill Dahl, called "Six Days" the "ultimate overworked rig driver's lament;" indeed, the song's lyrics bemoan highway patrolmen, scale weigh-ins and loneliness for the main protagonist's main squeeze, and speak of using "little white pills" to keep him awake. Like Malone, Dahl also cited Dudley's voice as perfect for the song, as "his bottomless pipes were certainly the ultimate vehicle for its delivery, reeking of too much turgid coffee and too many non-filtered cigarettes (those little white pills that he sings of were doubtless only a fictional contrivance)."
Dudley's version was also played during the STS-3
space shuttle mission as a wake-up call.
. It was also listed at number 13 on their easy listening survey.
Many truck-driving themed hits followed for Dudley, including "Last Day in the Mines," "Truck Drivin' Son-of-a-Gun" and "Truck Driver's Prayer."
took a cover to No. 58 on the country charts and No. 105 on the Billboard Hot 100
in 1974. Steve Earle
recorded the song for the 1987 movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and his version reached No. 29 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in early 1988. Another version was recorded by the band Sawyer Brown
on their 1997 album Six Days on the Road
, peaking at No. 13 on the country charts that year. Sawyer Brown's version also changed the line "I'm taking little white pills" to "I'm passing little white lines", thus omitting the drug reference.
Others who have recorded "Six Days" include Del Reeves
, George Jones
, Red Simpson
, Nev Nicholls, Ferlin Husky
, Boxcar Willie
, Red Sovine
, Jim Croce
, George Thorogood
, the Flying Burrito Brothers, who are shown performing the song live in the movie, "Gimme Shelter", as well as Gram Parsons
and the Fallen Angels, aka The Turkeys, blues
guitarist Popa Chubby
(for his 2008 album Vicious Country), New Riders of the Purple Sage
and Tom Petty's band Mudcrutch
. According to Dahl, one of the best versions was a blues-rocking rendition recorded in 1969 by Taj Mahal
.
The Youngbloods
covered it during a 1971 concert in San Francisco.
on his 1997 album A Paul Brandt Christmas: Shall I Play for You?.
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was formed in Muscle Shoals, Alabama,in 1969 when musicians Barry Beckett , Roger Hawkins , Jimmy Johnson and David Hood left FAME Studios to create their own studio...
songwriter Carl Montgomery and Earl Green, made originally famous by country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
singer Dave Dudley
Dave Dudley
Dave Dudley , born David Darwin Pedruska, was an American country music singer best-known for his truck-driving country anthems of the 1960s and 1970s and his semi-slurred baritone. His signature song was "Six Days on the Road," and he is also remembered for "Vietnam Blues," "Truck Drivin'...
. Originally released in 1963
1963 in country music
This is a list of notable events in country music that took place in the year 1963.-Events:*March — The month marks a dark time for country music, as it lost no less than five people in a seemingly endless string of tragedies.-United States:...
, the song became a major hit that year and is often hailed as the definitive celebration of the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
truck driver
Truck driver
A truck driver , is a person who earns a living as the driver of a truck, usually a semi truck, box truck, or dump truck.Truck drivers provide an essential service to...
.
In 1997, the song was successfully covered by country music band Sawyer Brown
Sawyer Brown
Sawyer Brown is an American country music band founded in 1981 in Apopka, Florida, by five members of country pop singer Don King's road band: Bobby Randall and Jim Scholten , both from Midland, Michigan; Joe Smyth , Gregg "Hobie" Hubbard , and Mark Miller...
, who took the song into the Top 15 of the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks
Hot Country Songs
Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...
chart.
Dave Dudley version
According to country music historian Bill MaloneBill Malone
Bill C. Malone is an American historian specializing in country music and other forms of traditional American music. He is the author of the 1968 book Country Music, U.S.A., the first definitive academic history of country music...
, "Six Days on the Road" was not the first truck driving song; Malone credits "Truck Driver's Blues" by Cliff Bruner, released in 1940, with that distinction. "Nor is it necessarily the best," said Malone, citing songs such as "Truck Driving Man" by Terry Fell and "White Line Fever" by Merle Haggard and the Strangers
Merle Haggard
Merle Ronald Haggard is an American country music singer, guitarist, fiddler, instrumentalist, and songwriter. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster guitars, vocal harmonies,...
as songs that "would certainly rival it".
However, "Six Days," Malone continued, "set off a vogue for such songs" that continued for many years. "The trucking songs coincided with country music's growing identification as working man's music in the 1960s," he said. Many country music artists and bands—including Alabama
Alabama (band)
Alabama is a country music and southern rock band from Fort Payne, Alabama, United States. The band was founded in 1969 by Randy Owen and his cousin Teddy Gentry , soon joined by Jeff Cook...
, Dick Curless
Dick Curless
Richard William Curless was an American country-music singer, a pioneer of the trucking music genre, commonly known as the "Baron of Country Music." He was easily distinguished because of the patch he usually wore over his right eye.-Biography:Curless was born in Fort Fairfield, Maine, and moved...
, Merle Haggard
Merle Haggard
Merle Ronald Haggard is an American country music singer, guitarist, fiddler, instrumentalist, and songwriter. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster guitars, vocal harmonies,...
, Kathy Mattea
Kathy Mattea
Kathleen Alice "Kathy" Mattea is an American country music and bluegrass performer who often brings folk, Celtic and traditional country sounds to her music. Active since 1983 as a recording artist, she has recorded seventeen albums and has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot...
, Ronnie Milsap
Ronnie Milsap
Ronnie Lee Milsap is an American country music singer and pianist. He was one of country’s most popular and influential performers of the 1970s and 1980s...
, Jerry Reed
Jerry Reed
Jerry Reed Hubbard , known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country music singer, innovative guitarist, songwriter, and actor who appeared in more than a dozen films...
, Del Reeves
Del Reeves
Franklin Delano Reeves , better known as Del Reeves, was an American country music singer, best known for his "girl-watching" novelty songs of the 1960s including "Girl on the Billboard" and "The Belles of Southern Bell"...
, Dan Seals
Dan Seals
Danny Wayland "Dan" Seals was an American musician. The younger brother of Seals & Crofts member Jim Seals, he first gained fame as the "England Dan" half of the soft rock duo England Dan and John Ford Coley, which charted nine pop and adult contemporary singles between 1976 and 1980, including...
, Red Simpson
Red Simpson
Red Simpson is an American country singer-songwriter best known for his trucker-themed songs.-Biography:Red Simpson was raised in Bakersfield, California, the youngest of a dozen children...
, Red Sovine
Red Sovine
Woodrow Wilson Sovine , better known as Red Sovine, was an American country music singer associated with truck driving songs, particularly those recited as narratives but set to music...
, Joe Stampley
Joe Stampley
Joe Stampley is an American country music singer.-Biography:He was born to R.C. Stampley, Jr. , and Mary E. Stampley...
, C.W. McCall, Steve Earle
Steve Earle
Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....
, among many others—recorded successful truck driving songs during the next 25 years. Several of those artists—Dudley included—became almost exclusively associated with songs about truck drivers and life on the road.
Dudley, stated Malone, "strikingly captures the sense of boredom, danger and swaggering masculinity that often accompanies long-distance truck driving. His macho interpretation, with its rock-and-roll overtones, is perfect for the song."
Allmusic writer Bill Dahl, called "Six Days" the "ultimate overworked rig driver's lament;" indeed, the song's lyrics bemoan highway patrolmen, scale weigh-ins and loneliness for the main protagonist's main squeeze, and speak of using "little white pills" to keep him awake. Like Malone, Dahl also cited Dudley's voice as perfect for the song, as "his bottomless pipes were certainly the ultimate vehicle for its delivery, reeking of too much turgid coffee and too many non-filtered cigarettes (those little white pills that he sings of were doubtless only a fictional contrivance)."
Dudley's version was also played during the STS-3
STS-3
STS-3 was NASA's third Space Shuttle mission, and was the third mission for the Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the first shuttle launch with an unpainted external tank, and the only mission to land at the White Sands Space Harbor near Las Cruces, New Mexico.-Crew:-Backup crew:-Mission...
space shuttle mission as a wake-up call.
Chart performance
Released in mid-May 1963, "Six Days on the Road" became Dudley's first major hit, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart that summer. The record spent 21 weeks on this chart, and it also became a minor hit on Top 40 radio stations, peaking at No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
. It was also listed at number 13 on their easy listening survey.
Many truck-driving themed hits followed for Dudley, including "Last Day in the Mines," "Truck Drivin' Son-of-a-Gun" and "Truck Driver's Prayer."
| Chart (1963) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles | 2 |
| U.S. Billboard Easy Listening | 13 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 32 |
Cover versions
Many cover versions of "Six Days on the Road" have been recorded, with three of them also being chart hits for other artists. Johnny RiversJohnny Rivers
Johnny Rivers is an American rock and roll singer, songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. His styles include folk songs, blues, and revivals of old-time rock 'n' roll songs and some original material...
took a cover to No. 58 on the country charts and No. 105 on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
in 1974. Steve Earle
Steve Earle
Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....
recorded the song for the 1987 movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and his version reached No. 29 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in early 1988. Another version was recorded by the band Sawyer Brown
Sawyer Brown
Sawyer Brown is an American country music band founded in 1981 in Apopka, Florida, by five members of country pop singer Don King's road band: Bobby Randall and Jim Scholten , both from Midland, Michigan; Joe Smyth , Gregg "Hobie" Hubbard , and Mark Miller...
on their 1997 album Six Days on the Road
Six Days on the Road (album)
Six Days on the Road is the title of the twelfth studio album released by the American country music band Sawyer Brown. It was released in 1997 on Curb Records. Its title track and lead-off single is a cover of the Dave Dudley hit from 1963. This cover reached #13 on the Billboard country charts...
, peaking at No. 13 on the country charts that year. Sawyer Brown's version also changed the line "I'm taking little white pills" to "I'm passing little white lines", thus omitting the drug reference.
Others who have recorded "Six Days" include Del Reeves
Del Reeves
Franklin Delano Reeves , better known as Del Reeves, was an American country music singer, best known for his "girl-watching" novelty songs of the 1960s including "Girl on the Billboard" and "The Belles of Southern Bell"...
, George Jones
George Jones
George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette....
, Red Simpson
Red Simpson
Red Simpson is an American country singer-songwriter best known for his trucker-themed songs.-Biography:Red Simpson was raised in Bakersfield, California, the youngest of a dozen children...
, Nev Nicholls, Ferlin Husky
Ferlin Husky
Ferlin Eugene Husky was an early American country music singer who was equally adept at the genres of traditional honky honk, ballads, spoken recitations, and rockabilly pop tunes...
, Boxcar Willie
Boxcar Willie
Boxcar Willie, born as Lecil Travis Martin was an American country music singer, who sang in the "old-time hobo" music style, complete with dirty face, overalls, and a floppy hat...
, Red Sovine
Red Sovine
Woodrow Wilson Sovine , better known as Red Sovine, was an American country music singer associated with truck driving songs, particularly those recited as narratives but set to music...
, Jim Croce
Jim Croce
James Joseph "Jim" Croce January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973 was an American singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles...
, George Thorogood
George Thorogood
George Thorogood is an American blues rock vocalist/guitarist from Wilmington, Delaware, United States, known for his hit song "Bad to the Bone" as well as for covers of blues standards such as Hank Williams' "Move It On Over" and John Lee Hooker's "House Rent Boogie/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One...
, the Flying Burrito Brothers, who are shown performing the song live in the movie, "Gimme Shelter", as well as Gram Parsons
Gram Parsons
Gram Parsons was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist. Parsons is best known for his work within the country genre; he also mixed blues, folk, and rock to create what he called "Cosmic American Music"...
and the Fallen Angels, aka The Turkeys, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
guitarist Popa Chubby
Popa Chubby
Ted Horowitz , who plays under the stage name of Popa Chubby , is an American electric blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist.-Life and career:Born the son of a candy store owner, at age thirteen Horowitz began playing drums; shortly thereafter, he...
(for his 2008 album Vicious Country), New Riders of the Purple Sage
New Riders of the Purple Sage
New Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco, California in 1969, and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. Their best known song is "Panama Red"...
and Tom Petty's band Mudcrutch
Mudcrutch
Mudcrutch is a Southern rock band from Gainesville, Florida best known for being the forerunner of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.-Early Years:Mudcrutch was formed in 1970 by Tom Petty and Tom Leadon, who had been playing together in a band called the Epics...
. According to Dahl, one of the best versions was a blues-rocking rendition recorded in 1969 by Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal (musician)
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks , who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music...
.
The Youngbloods
The Youngbloods
The Youngbloods was an American folk rock band consisting of Jesse Colin Young , Jerry Corbitt , Lowell Levinger, nicknamed "Banana," , and Joe Bauer . Despite receiving critical acclaim, they never achieved widespread popularity. Their only U.S. Top 40 entry was "Get Together".-Background and...
covered it during a 1971 concert in San Francisco.
"Six Tons of Toys"
Dudley recorded a re-written Christmas version entitled "Six Tons of Toys" on his 1982 album Trucker's Christmas. This was covered by Paul BrandtPaul Brandt
Paul Rennée Belobersycky is a Canadian country music artist, known professionally as Paul Brandt. Growing up in Calgary, he was a pediatric RN at the time of his big break...
on his 1997 album A Paul Brandt Christmas: Shall I Play for You?.
Further reading
- Whitburn, Joel, "Top Country Songs: 1944-2005," 2006.