The Legend-News

The Jersey Shore
If you started your trip on Sunday, you ought to be at that one Atlantic Ocean by now. If you're not, then you're probably still trying to get through the construction traffic on the Borman Expressway (ha!) on I-80 in northwestern Indiana.

Get Me Rewrite!
The final selection for this Convoy Week is the last version of "Convoy" that C.W. recorded, back in 1990 on the (so far) last C.W. McCall album, The Real McCall: An American Storyteller. Yeah, I know that Bill has said that he's not planning to record again, but we can always hope.

The differences between "Convoy" from Black Bear Road and "Convoy" from The Real McCall: An American Storyteller are minor, at least in the words. Only a few have been changed or added. The big difference is the recording itself. Like the other cuts on The Real McCall: An American Storyteller, the recording was not made in the old tape-to-vinyl route, but was done digitally and released on audio CD. The Real McCall: An American Storyteller is also available on cassette tape, but it's never seen vinyl or 8-track. An era is gone. :(

And the song is a new recording, not just a remastering of the original tape. The reasons for this are complex -- it was a business decision -- and the simple version goes like this: in 1989, Chip Davis (the musical part of C.W.) wanted to rerelease the original recordings by remastering the tapes and releasing the results on CD. But Polygram held the master tapes, and Chip couldn't persuade Polygram to give him access to those tapes. So Chip went to Plan B, and rerecorded fifteen of the original songs and added one new one. Since American Gramaphone -- which is Chip Davis -- held the copyrights to the songs, this was not a problem. The finished album was released in 1990 as The Real McCall: An American Storyteller.

When you listen to this album, you may notice that Bill's voice has changed a bit, the phrasings are slightly different, and in general the songs don't sound exactly like the originals. Well, if they did, then what would be the point? We'd have an album akin to that recent travesty, the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho. Times change, and so did C.W. He's still mellow.

Song A' Th' Day
See the preceeding missive. :)

Convoy

(C.W. McCall, B. Fries, C. Davis)

From the album The Real McCall: An American Storyteller.