The Legend-News

Monday, 2001 March 26 : Volume 4, Number 7

What We Got Here

The Critters comment in Letters To Ed.; a splash in the pond as we go Surfin' With The Rubber Duck; the history of a C.W. McCall web site in Administrivia; and watching life pass in "The Little Brown Sparrow And Me", the Song A’ Th’ Week.

Letters To Ed.

Drew Waples gave us further information on the original C.W. McCall commercials.

F.E. Miller, the owner of the store and an actual Pisgah resident, appeared in two of the Old Home Bread Commercials: the first commercial filmed in Pisgah (shot in the Old Home Café), and the last one. The last commercial was filmed in the store, and featured F.E. Miller selling C.W. his engagement ring for Mavis. Got a kick out of the copy of the free drive in theater ticket you had posted. Mr. Miller had them printed up for advertising.

David Frederick, the World's Greatest CONVOY Movie Fan, sent us this photo of an advertisement for the song "Convoy". This is the type of ad that would be published in a music industry paper such as Billboard. Judging by the name of the file, "CVadnov181975.jpg", this promotion was published on 18 November 1975.

Visit David's CONVOY site for information about the movie.

And speaking of The Motion Picture CONVOY, Billings Artworks is still making the "Rubber Duck" hood ornament used in movie, although John Billings is a little busy at the moment.

Yes, I am still making the "Rubber Duck", however I am a little backlogged with the Grammy awards right now. They awarded a record number of Grammys this year (351) and I am trying to get caught up. I sold the last two ducks I had, and both of the guys saw it on your web site. They were both very excited about it and said they had been looking for one for twenty years.

For now I am keeping it at the same price, $65.

Thanks, John

For more information on the ornament, see the Emporium page.

Surfin' With The Rubber Duck

Velvet Roses' Press. A rock band considers its playlist, in January 1999.

"After comparing early record purchases where names like Kansas and C.W. McCall come up, the band briefly contemplates the commercial viability of resurrecting the trucker ballad. This notion is also short-lived. Music is too important to the Roses to allow themselves to be turned into a jukebox."

"Newsgroup". A parody of "Convoy".

It was the dark of the moon on the 6th of June with a Macintosh 840 Quad.
A 486 with a gig drive on and a Hayes 28K baud.
We was headin for bear on the infobahn with ten hours on Compuserve.
I said Pigpen this here's the Rubber Duck and I'm about to put the gopher down.

Discography: C.W. McCall. Y'know, it's really annoying when a commercial site just can't get it correct.

C.W. McCall
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Genre: (Other: Country)

Albums
1	Best of C.W. McCall
2	Four Wheel Cowboy
3	Greatest Hits
4	Greatest Hits
5	Wilderness
6	Black Bear Road
7	Wolf Creek Pass
8	Real McCall
9	Rubber Duck

LPs. C.W. McCall vinyl for sale, if you've got the Deutschmarks and you're near Germany.

LP 102	C.W. MCCALL Wilderness (1976; seit seinem Erfolg mit "Convoy" ein Liebling aller Trucker)	Polydor 1-6069 (US) CO M/SD	25,-
LP 103	C.W. MCCALL Rubber Duck (1976)	Polydor 1-6094 (US) VG+/SD	25,-
LP 104	C.W. MCCALL Rubber Duck (1976; wie oben)	Polydor 1-6094 (US) PC VG+/SD	25,-
LP 105	C.W. MCCALL C.W. McCall & Co. (1979)	Polydor 1-6190 (US) M/SD	22,-

Administrivia

The original The World's Original C.W. McCall Web Site™ is gone. But don't panic! The site is still alive; it just moved to a new server.

Long ago, on a web server far, far away, C.W. McCall: An American Legend began its life, at the "old" TechRen.com site. About one year ago we moved the C.W. McCall pages to their current location at TechRen.net, where they are today. But the old files at TechRen.com remained, partly out of a sense of history and partly because I was too lazy to delete them.

About a six weeks ago we edited the pages at TechRen.com, adding automatic redirection to the corresponding pages at TechRen.net. (For the technically inclined, we add <meta http-equiv="refresh" url="0;http://www.techren.net/mccall/"> in the HEAD section of the pages.) With that change, anyone who happened to point their browser to one of the "old" page addresses would be directed to the new pages.

But as of this past weekend, all of the C.W. pages at TechRen.com have been deleted. Please update your bookmarks (you did bookmark the site, didn't you?), or you'll be clicking a few more times to find your favorite pages.

As for those "old" pages, they've been archived over here at TechRen Enterprises International Headquarters. Maybe they'll be worth a few pennies some day, when the history of C.W. McCall is finally written. (We'll put it on the CD-ROM that accompanies the book. ).

As for TechRen.com, well, we'll figure out just what the heck it's supposed to be, one of these days.

Song A’ Th’ Week

Spring Fevered
When I retired for bed last night, the outside temperature was 38 degrees Fahrenheit and the ground was clear: the snow cover had disappeared earlier last week when the temperature had reached into the 50s. When I awakened this morning, there was a blizzard outside my window. Snow flurries continued until noon, and then the snow melted away once again. And MTV is broadcasting "Spring Break", so I'm pretty sure that Spring is here.

The Little Brown Sparrow And Me
(C.W. McCall, Bill Fries, Chip Davis)
From the album Wilderness

One green April mornin', when I was a young boy
I lay by the window, a-watchin' the rain
And I wondered if ever the sun would come shinin'
So I could go somewhere to play

Then down from the sky flew a little brown sparrow
And he lit on the branch of an old willow tree
And he sit there, watchin', as I lay wond'rin'
Just the little brown sparrow and me

On a green April mornin', when I was a young boy
And little brown sparrows were free

Then he looked in my window and he spied his reflection
There was the willow, there was the sky
And he wondered if ever the sun would come shinin'
And which was the way for the sparrow to fly

Well, he spread out his wings and he flew to the window
Fast as the wind, sure as could be
But the sky in the window was only a wishin'
For the little brown sparrow and me

On a green April mornin', when I was a young boy
And little brown sparrows were free

So there by the window, the sparrow had fallen
He died on the ground in the cold April rain
And I wondered if ever the sun would come shinin'
And someone could only explain

Then I laid there and saw the wind blow through the willow
And cover him over with yesterday's leaves
And there in the rain, I cried for a sparrow
For a little brown sparrow and me

On a green April mornin', when I was a young boy
And little brown sparrows were free
On a green April mornin', when life was a window
For a little brown sparrow and me

"The Little Brown Sparrow and Me" was rerecorded for the album The Real McCall: An American Storyteller.