Dave Dudley

Born David Darwin Pedruska on May 3, 1928, in Spencer, Wisconsin, Dave Dudley originated the truck-driving strain of country music. His 1963 single “Six Days on the Road,” issued on Golden Wing, established the style—a fusion of honky-tonk and rock-tinged country whose lyrics centered on the routines and hardships of long-haul drivers. A run of Top 15 country singles carried him through the 1960s, and he continued placing records inside the Top 40 well into the following decade, cementing his status among the era’s most successful vocalists.

At age eleven his father handed him a guitar, yet baseball remained his primary passion. He played through his teens and, as a young man, joined the Gainesville Owls until an arm injury ended his athletic prospects. Turning to radio work, he took a disc-jockey post at a Texas station and sometimes strummed along with the records he played. The station owner urged him to perform professionally, and Dudley heeded the suggestion.

In the early 1950s he relocated to Idaho and assembled the Dave Dudley Trio, which spent seven years together without notable commercial impact. After the group disbanded in 1960, he settled in Minneapolis and formed the Country Gentlemen, quickly attracting a loyal local following. That December a hit-and-run driver struck him while he loaded his guitar into a car, sidelining him for several months. Once recovered, he landed a contract with Vee Records; the resulting single “Maybe I Do” registered modestly in the autumn of 1961. A second minor hit, “Under Cover of the Night,” appeared the next year on Jubilee Records.

Summer 1963 brought his breakthrough when “Six Days on the Road” climbed to number two on the country chart and crossed into the pop Top 40. He signed with Mercury Records that same year, releasing “Last Day in the Mines” before year’s end. Throughout the decade he issued a steady stream of trucking songs—“Truck Drivin’ Son-of-a-Gun,” “Trucker's Prayer,” “Anything Leaving Town Today,” “There Ain't No Easy Run,” and “Two Six Packs Away” among them—while also turning out conservative, good-old-boy anthems toward the close of the sixties.

Several more hits arrived in the early 1970s, most prominently the 1971 Top Ten singles “Comin’ Down” and “Fly Away Again.” By the start of the 1980s his presence on the charts had faded; his final hit, “Rolaids, Doan's Pills and Preparation H,” appeared in 1980. Recording activity slowed during the 1980s and 1990s, yet he stayed in demand as a live performer. Truck drivers remained devoted fans, and the Teamsters Union presented him with an honorary solid-gold membership card. Dudley died of a heart attack at his Wisconsin home on December 12, 2003.