Dick Curless

Dick Curless earned his greatest renown through truck-driving numbers such as “Drag ’Em Off the Interstate, Sock It to ’Em J.P. Blues.” Standing tall, sporting an eye-patch, and possessing a rich baritone, he acquired the nickname “Baron of Country Music” from his well-known recording “The Baron.” Born in Fort Fairfield, ME, he launched his professional work in 1948 alongside the Trail Blazers at a radio station in Ware, MA, where the group promoted him as “the Tumbleweed Kid.” Drafted in 1951, he performed regularly on the Armed Forces Network while posted in the Far East and was introduced there as “the Rice Paddy Ranger.” Three years afterward he came back to Maine and took up club work in Bangor. His major opportunity arrived when he won Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts; afterward he appeared in Las Vegas and Hollywood, secured a record deal, and then paused his rising momentum because of illness.

He resettled in Maine and soon shared bills with Gene Hooper, Lone Pine, and Betty Cody. Country-chart success finally arrived in 1965 via the Top Five single “A Tombstone Every Mile,” which was followed by nine additional chart entries, among them the strong seller “Six Times a Day (The Trains Came Down).” In 1970 he joined the Capitol roster and reached the Top 30 with “Big Wheel Cannonball,” a piece derived from the standard “Wabash Cannonball.” Its successor, “Hard, Hard Traveling Man” (1970), climbed to the Top 40. Over his entire career he accumulated 22 hits. During the ’60s he belonged to The Wheeling Jamboree, and between 1966 and 1968 he traveled with the Buck Owens show. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s he entered the studio only sporadically and embraced born-again Christianity. An album was cut in Norway in 1987, and by 1992 he had become a steady presence at the Cristy Lane Theater in Branson, MO. Curless died in 1995.