US country singer CW McCall died last Friday (April 1) at the age of 93 at his home in the small town of Ouray, Colorado. His son confirmed this to the Washington Post. The musician had been in a hospice for six months because of cancer.
Country character jumped out of a commercial
The singer-songwriter’s real name was Billie Fries and was born in 1928 in Audubon in the Midwest. His father was a foreman in a pigsty factory and his mother was a housewife. After showing early musical talent and an interest in drawing, he studied art and music at the “University of Iowa” – although his academic career lasted only one year. From the early 1960s he worked for the advertising agency “Bozell & Jacobs”, where he created a television advertising campaign for a baked goods manufacturer in 1973 as creative director.
For this purpose, he created a universe around the originally fictional truck driver CW McCall based on the experiences he had had in Iowa in his own youth. He had a liaison with Mavi, the chewing gum-chewing waitress at the trucker café, and drove out baked goods for the also fictitious bakery “Old Home Bread Company”. The spots were so popular that the broadcast times were advertised in daily newspapers and fan clubs were formed.
The New York advertising executives were appalled
In 1974, the commercials were recognized as the country’s best television advertising campaign at the Clio Awards, an awards ceremony organized by the advertising industry. “When I accepted the award, I could see the shock and horror on the faces of all these New York advertisers,” Fries once told a local newspaper, adding, “I remember saying, ‘I bet you never would have thought something good like this could come out of Omaha.’”
His biggest hit “Convoy” even became a feature film
Eventually, creator Billie Fries appropriated the character CW McCall and released music under that name. The best-known play to date is titled “Convoy”: It was released in 1976 and tells the story of rebellious truckers who flout speed limits, industry regulations and law enforcement officers through the CB radio used by long-distance drivers. The song has played a major role in shaping the jargon used in it.
“We’ve always taken ourselves seriously, but we never thought it would get this big,” Fries said of the song’s popularity. It stayed at #1 on the US country chart for six weeks and at the top of the US pop chart for a week. To date, more than 20 million copies of the single have been sold. The song was even filmed three years after it was released: the road movie by Sam Peckinpah stages the trucker as a modern cowboy.
CW McCall remained musically active well into the early ’00s. He was also committed to environmental issues and ventured into politics: From 1986 on Fries was active for six years as mayor of the 900-resident Ouray in Colorado – in the place where he now closed his eyes forever. He is survived by his wife Rena Bonnema Fries, to whom he was married for 70 years; three children together, as well as four grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson.