The Legend-News

Now he’s the real McCall

By Gene Raffensperger

Fame and success are causing Bill Fries to change his name.

An advertising executive, Fries (pronounced Frees) came up with this great idea for a television commercial involving a country-talking bread truck driver and a well-stacked gum-chewing truck stop waitress.

C.W. McCall and Mavis. Wow, what a success. The commerical won a Clio (the Oscar of the ad world) and in the four-state area of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, thousand tuned in as ol’ C.W., double-clutching his semi-trailer truck, drove Mavis to the drive-in theater at Pisgah.

All the time it was Fries’ voice on the commercial. C.W. McCall (actor Jim Finlayson) never said a word. Finlayson, who has a mobile face and bears a resemblance to actor Victor Jory, mouthed the words, but the great down-home country voice was that of Fries.

Top 10 Record

Flushed with the success of C.W. McCall in the television ad, Fries spun off a little bread of his own with a record called “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep on a-Trucking Café.”

Well, as they say in show biz, a star was born. That single hit the country charts in the top 10, crossed over to the pop charts and did well.

Folks in Los Angeles and Miami were talking about C.W. McCall.

MGM Records came calling and signed Fries to a contract. He did an album, “Wolf Creek Pass,” as C.W. McCall and currently that baby is near the top on three country charts.

The album cover has a picture of C.W. McCall holding a chicken under his arm. C.W., it turns out, looks like a middle-aged John Denver.

[Ed. Note: the preceeding portion of this article appeared on page 1; the remaining appeared on page 4, under a subtitle of “Gone too far, I have to be C.W.”]

It’s Fries, of course, who for the first time is putting his face where his voice is.

2 C.W. McCalls

No problem for the folks in Miami and Portland, who haven’t seen Finlayson. The trouble is, the folks in Iowa and the other Midwestern states who see Finlayson flirting with Mavis on TV, find it difficult to accept this stranger on the album.

“I’m known as C.W. McCall in 46 states, but in Iowa and three other states there are two C.W. McCalls, Jim Finlayson and I. The only thing that will solve it is for me to change my name to C.W. McCall and that’s what I’m going to do,” said Fries.

“Even my own mother doesn’t accept the fact that I’m accepted as C.W.,” said Fries, or McCall.

Legal Name Change

He’s having a lawyer get started making it legal. The C will be for Carl, his grandfather’s name, and the W. for William, “so I can keep my names Willie and Bill.”

“The people in the record business have advised me to change my name because I’m known all over the country as C.W. McCall and my face and my name must match.”

Carson Guest

Fries (McCall) is going to be a guest on the Johnny Carson show Wednesday night [1975 May 21 — Ed.] and he hopes to be able to explain the whole thing there, complete with showing a couple of commercials (which will pop Finlayson on to the national scene). He’ll also do a couple of songs from the album ) [Bill performed, at least, “Wolf Creek Pass”. See the liner notes regarding this song on The Real McCall: An American Storyteller. — Ed.].

The question now is, what will happen to the television commercials? “Nothing,” says Fries. “They’ll continue to run and we’re planning some more in the future. Jim will continue to play C.W. and I’ll be the voice.”

Success in the record business has caused Fries to step down as creative director of Bozell and Jacobs, Inc., the Omaha, Neb., advertising firm, and take a role as head of “special creative projects” for the firm.

Identity Crisis

“I’m still on the staff, will draw a salary and I will continue to handle the Old Home Bread commercials,” said Fries, who said that some of his friends in Omaha now call him C.W.

Mavis is really Jeanie Capps, a Dallas, Tex., housewife: “Lots of attention. Flowers, perfume. No candy. A trip to Las Vegas ’cause I’ve never been. And champagne would be fine.”

Calling his problem “an identity crisis,” Fries said, “What happened was we just did our job too well. People in this four-state midwest area think of C.W. McCall and Mavis as a trucker and a waitress rather than just actors.”

Fries said the identity crisis first became real to him while he was on a personal appearance for the record firm in San Francisco, Calif.

“Gone Too Far”

“You go through your life (Fries is 46) and do your job and suddenly you are in San Francisco and 300 people show up to get your autograph and they call you C.W. McCall and you say to yourself, ’Hey, who am I, what am I doing here?’”

Added Fries: “Down deep I’d like to be Bill Fries on the album, but it’s gone too far now and I have to be C.W. McCall. It’s a remarkable experience when you stop and realize that all this was caused by three little pieces of celluloid — commercials at that.”

Fries hopes to do more albums and to keep the truck driving line in them (Wolf Creek Pass talks about C.W. hauling a semi-load of chickens when the brakes go out).

CB Homework

As part of his homework he keeps a CB radio in a four-wheel drive vehicle he uses around Omaha, his home. Fries’ CB handle is “Gray Wolf,” a name he chose over “C.W.” because, he says, “at least a half dozen others in the area are using it.”

Sometimes when Fries hears these “C.W.’s” on the CB he gets on his and, in his best C.W. voice, he says, country-style, “This is the real McCall, 10-4.”