The Legend-News
What We Got Here in this edition of The Legend-News.
- I've Got A Little List: Classified McCall
- Coming Attractions: que sera, sera
- Old Home Café: C.W. and T. Tommy, continued
- Song A’ Th’ Week: "Oregon Trail"
I've Got A Little List
Roll your own.
A recent topic on the Other Wild Places list was the question of "what C.W. McCall songs would you put on a CD?" Although two audio CDs of songs from the Original Six albums exist — C.W. McCall's Greatest Hits and The Best Of C.W. McCall — those two CDs probably do not include all of your favorite C.W. McCall songs.
Over here at TechRen Enterprises, we just set our iPod to 'shuffle = on' and let the music flow. But if you're looking for more order in your playlist, here's a guide to the basic categories of C.W. McCall songs. Some songs appear in more than one category. All of these songs appear on the Original Six albums from the 1970s, except for "Comin' Back For More" from The Real McCall: An American Storyteller.
True And Semi-True Stories. These songs are based on events that actually occurred in the life of Bill Fries.
- Audubon (where he was born)
- Black Bear Road (probably the most famous road in Colorado)
- Camp Bird Mine (Bill took a ride down into it)
- Classified (actually, his son Mark bought the pickup)
- Crispy Critters (or, why there are hippies in Telluride)
- The Little Brown Sparrow And Me
- The Little Things In Life
- Milton (the story of C.W. on tour, or maybe not)
- Mountains On My Mind
- Nishnabotna (a river near Audubon)
- Old Glory
- Rocky Mountain September (a mushy love story about a girl or a Jeep)
- Roy
- The Silverton (Bill rode it, and it's still in operation)
- Sing Silent Night (a Christmas Eve, long ago)
Old Home Café. Based on the television commercials in which the character of C.W. McCall first appeared.
- Old Home Filler-Up An' Keep On A-Truckin' Café (the first one is in Pisgah, Iowa)
- Sloan (C.W.'s dog)
You could make a case that the narrator of "Wolf Creek Pass", "Black Bear Road", and "Super Slab Showdown" is the same character.
CB Radio. You thought that there were more of these, didn't you?
- Convoy (bears to the left, bears to the right)
- Ratchetjaw (fast-talkin')
- 'Round The World With The Rubber Duck (the follow-up to "Convoy")
- Super Slab Showdown (the follow-up to "Wolf Creek Pass")
- Two-Way Lovin' (what you did before Internet chat rooms existed)
Trucks. C.W. and eighteen wheels.
- Convoy (Kenworth, Peterbilt, General Motors)
- I've Trucked All Over This Land
- Long Lonesome Road
- Night Rider
- Old 30
- Old Home Filler-Up An' Keep On A-Truckin' Café
- 'Round The World With The Rubber Duck (Mercedes)
- Sloan
- Super Slab Showdown (good old Bessie)
- Wheels Of Fortune
- Windshield Wipers In Rain
- Wolf Creek Pass (1948 Peterbilt)
Trains. Steam or diesel or gasoline engines, they still ride on rails.
- City Of New Orleans (Chicago to New Orleans)
- The Gallopin' Goose (somewhere in the San Juan Mountains)
- The Silverton (Durango to Silverton and back again)
Four Wheel Drive. Lock your hubs.
- Four Wheel Cowboy (Denver to Santa Fe)
- Four Wheel Drive (a scenic tour of southwestern Iowa)
- Rocky Mountain September (yes, this song is about a Jeep)
Rivers. Fastest to slowest.
- Green River (Wyoming)
- Niobrara (Nebraska)
- Nishnabotna (Iowa)
The West. Everything in this category is west of the Mississippi River.
- Aurora Borealis
- Black Bear Road
- Camp Bird Mine
- Columbine
- The Cowboy
- The Gallopin' Goose
- Ghost Town
- Glenwood Canyon
- Green River
- Jackson Hole
- Night Hawk
- Niobrara
- Oregon Trail
- Riverside Slide
- Silver Iodide Blues
- The Silverton
- Wilderness
- Wolf Creek Pass
History. These events are real, or at least they're based on actual events.
- The Battle Of New Orleans (the last battle of the War of 1812)
- Comin' Back For More (Alferd G. Packer, cannibal)
- Crispy Critters (it happened in Ouray and Telluride)
- The Gallopin' Goose (based in Dolores, Colorado)
- Glenwood Canyon (near I-70, west of Denver)
- Oregon Trail (head west from St. Joseph, Missouri)
- Riverside Slide (it's south of Ouray, Colorado)
- The Silverton (120 years and still running)
Funny. You did laugh, didn't you?
- Black Bear Road
- Classified
- Comin' Back For More
- Convoy
- Crispy Critters
- Four Wheel Cowboy
- Four Wheel Drive
- I Don't Know And I Don't Care
- Lewis And Clark
- Milton
- Old Home Filler-Up An' Keep On A-Truckin' Café
- Sloan
- Super Slab Showdown
- Wolf Creek Pass
Protest. We hope that someone is listening.
- Glenwood Canyon (too many roads, not enough wilderness)
- Silver Iodide Blues (too much of a good thing)
- There Won't Be No Country Music (There Won't Be No Rock 'N' Roll) (The End.)
Songs That Weren't Written By Bill And Chip. Roses For Mama and C.W. McCall & Co. are the only albums which contain songs that "C.W. McCall" didn't write.
- The Battle Of New Orleans (Jimmy Driftwood)
- City Of New Orleans (Steve Goodman)
- The Cowboy (Ron Agnew)
- Flowers On The Wall (Lewis Dewitt)
- Hobo's Lullaby (Goebel Reeves)
- I Wish There Was More That I Could Give (Walt Meskell, Tim Martin)
- Livin' Within My Means (Ron Agnew)
- Milton (Ron Agnew)
- Night Hawk (Tom McKeon, Ron Peterson)
- The Only Light (Walt Meskell, Tim Martin)
- Outlaws And Lone Star Beer (Bob Duncan, John Durrill)
- Roses For Mama (Johnny Wilson, Gene Dobbins, Wayne Sharpe)
- Take My Duds To The Junkman (Ron Agnew)
- Watch The Wildwood Flowers (Ron Agnew)
- Wheels Of Fortune (Terry Skinner, J.L. Wallace)
Ron Agnew and Walt Meskell were two of the musicians in the C.W. McCall "group".
Music. They're either about music, or they're instrumentals.
- Outlaws And Lone Star Beer (you probably remember Waylon and Willie's version)
- Silver Cloud Breakdown (instrumental, from the Motion Picture "CONVOY")
- Telluride Breakdown (instrumental)
- Write Me A Song (in case Bill ran out of ideas)
Christmas. Until Bill records the Christmas In Ouray album, this will need to suffice.
- Sing Silent Night
UPDATE, 17 September 2003. The instructions in the next paragraph are incorrect. The forum discussion list, Other Wild Places, is now an online forum.
If you want to discuss the songs of C.W. McCall, or just about anything that's related to C.W. McCall, join the Other Wild Places mailing list. Send a message (a blank one is okay) to owp-subscribe@techren.net and the 'bot will add you to the list.
Coming Attractions
As seen in the crystal ball.
The staff of The Legend-News doesn't intend to sit on their duffs this year. We plan to occasionally stand up and stretch, too. And when we're done stretching, we're going to make a few changes on the web site. Don't worry, you won't feel a thing. Much.
C.W. McCall Tour 2002. Yes, it's still on for the weekend of June 7. A fast-paced trip around the west end of Iowa and a bit of Nebraska, this event gives you an excuse to drive too far, too fast, and for no really good reason except to get your picture taken with a bunch of Crispy Critters. The Legend-News will provide full coverage.
Convoy 2000. We will finally gather all of the myriad stories and pictures of this event and put them where they can be easily read. You won't need to look through the back issues of The Legend-News for the complete story.
Pictures. Yes, we've figured a digital camera into our budget, and we're going to start posting pictures of C.W. McCall stuff that you haven't yet seen. Some of our collection just doesn't seem to fit onto a flatbed scanner. The coffee mug complained of flash burns from the scanning lamp.
New features. We'd tell you what they are, but then we'd have to serve you with a gag order. Trust us on this one.
Advertising. Gotcha! No, we're not accepting advertising. Never had it, never will, unless someone really wants to pay us a lot of shekels. We will admit, however, that when you click on one of those links to Amazon.com and buy something, we do get a couple of pennies out of the deal; but that's not enough to keep us in Peanut M&Ms and Coca-Cola.
[Update, 2011-04-15: The State of Illinois has passed a tax bill that would require Amazon.com to collect sales tax from Illinois residents, because Amazon “has a presence” in the state, in the form of Amazon Associates. As a result, Amazon has discontinued the Associates program in Illinois, and I have removed all product links to Amazon.com. — Ed.]
Site design. A few tweaks here and there, to make the pages more consistant. What, you didn't notice the problems? For the technically inclined, that means that we're going to make sure that all of the pages will validate as XHTML 1.0. Since some of our current pages have a few, uh, 'errors', this will make all of the pages readable by all current browsers — at least, that's the theory. We promise to check the site with every browser: both of them. (That's a web designer joke. Laugh if you get it.)
Web site archive on CD-ROM. Every once in a while, we'll package the entire site on a CD-ROM and make it available to you, the viewer. For those of you with annoyingly slow dial-up or timed connections, you'll be able to browse the site without the fear that you'll exceed your monthly allotment (or budget).
Old Home Café
Back where it all began
C.W. McCall and T. Tommy Cutrer finish off the first day of C.W.'s week of co-hosting Music City U.S.A., on 17 November 1975.
[T. Tommy] C.W. gotta do one more song. Would you tell us the story of the Oregon Trail? We're gonna find out more about it later in the week.
[C.W.] Well, this is a kinda serious song here, and it's a, in this year of our bicentennial, we kinda thought it'd be good to do a song about one of the very famous trails and roads in our history.
[T. Tommy] The Oregon Trail. Yeah, it is for a fact. C.W. McCall.
(The audio group at The Legend-News is busy digitizing all five days of C.W. and T. Tommy, and we'll have the shows available as MP3 CDs in the near future.)
Song A’ Th’ Week
Words without music. Call 'em poems.
When you're driving coast-to-coast, or even over to the next town, you don't think much about the land over which you're driving. You're on pavement; you don't need to struggle up a rocky hillside, or ford a river. Yeah, there was a time when bridges were really scarce, and Travel Centers of America and Stuckey's were nowhere to be found.
Oregon Trail
(C.W. McCall, Bill Fries, Chip Davis)
From the album
Black Bear Road
Did you see me at Westport Landing
On the wide Missouri shore?
Did you hear the west wind calling
In the spring of forty-four?
[Chorus]
If the mud don't stay and the cattle don't stray
We can make Fort Kearny by the middle of May
If the mud don't stay and the cattle don't stray
We can make Fort Kearny by the middle of May
Did you see me at old Fort Kearny?
Did you hear my trumpets blow?
Did you write your name in stone, boys
On the great Platte River road?
[Chorus]
If the wolf don't howl in the dark of the moon
We can make Scotts Bluff by the middle of June
If the wolf don't howl in the dark of the moon
We can make Scotts Bluff by the middle of June
Did you see that endless prairie
Blowin' clean and pure and free?
Did you hear that rollin' thunder
On the wild Nebraska sea?
Did you climb the shining mountains?
Did you cross that Great Divide?
Did you pray to God Almighty
To let you down the other side?
[Chorus, but only by C.W.]
Roll wagons, rollin' rollin'
Roll wagons, rollin' home
Roll wagons, rollin' rollin'
Roll wagons, rollin' home
Did you see me out on the desert?
Did you see my oxen die?
Did you find a drop of water?
Did you hear my children cry?
[Chorus]
If the sun don't shine and the river don't rise
We can make South Pass by the fourth of July
If the sun don't shine and the river don't rise
We can make South Pass by the fourth of July
Did you see the high Sierra
Far beyond the burning sand?
Did you find that golden valley?
Did you reach the Promised Land?
[Chorus]
If the snow don't fly and the river don't dry
We can make that valley before we die
If the snow don't fly and the river don't dry
We can make that valley before we die
The Legend-News is Copyright 2002 TechRen Enterprises. "I must be dreamin', don't wanna wake up now." Thanks to Bill Fries and Chip Davis for the words and music.