Despite what the old joke about playing a country song in reverse may tell you, very few country songs are actually about trucks. That is, trucks with only four wheels. If we're talking the kind with 18, then the number of country songs about that topic goes way up. Back in 1963, Dave Dudley's "Six Days on the Road" was one of the first such songs, and while it wasn't until the 1970s that the trend really hit its peak (C.W. McCall's "Convoy" the clear front runner), plenty of songs about the topic existed before then. Among them, Red Sovine's "Phantom 309" and "Giddyup Go", George Hamilton IV's "Truck Drivin' Man", and Dick Curless' "A Tombstone Every Mile".
Maine native Dick Curless was a radio DJ on Armed Forces Radio, using the handle Rice Paddy Ranger, during the Korean War. However, Curless was also plagued with health issues, most notably heart problems and a bad eye, the latter of which explained his signature eye patch. (There's something about an eyepatch that so often conveys toughness to me: Ray Sawyer of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, Nick Fury, Bagley Brown Jr., Steve "Patch" Johnson… I could go on.) He got his foot in the door by way of Arthur Godfrey's Talent Show in 1956, but plenty of false starts came up: more health problems, destruction of his house by a hurricane, and three unsuccessful discs on the Tiffany label. A small label called Allagash then put out the song "A Tombstone Every Mile", which caught on locally and eventually spread its way as far as Boston. Capitol Records then bought out Allagash, singing Dick to their Tower Records subsidiary and pushing "Tombstone" into the country Top 5 that summer.
What I find interesting about some of the earlier truck driving songs is that most were sentimental ("Six Days on the Road" is about the happiness of returning from a truck trip, and "Giddyup Go" is a father-son reunion tale), while others were darker, such as the ghost story in "Phantom 309". These stand in stark contrast to the later wave of trucking songs in the 1970s, such as the rebellious "Convoy" or the energetic "East Bound and Down" — not that the sentimentality was completely gone, as seen in "Teddy Bear". "Tombstone" was definitely on the dark side of the spectrum, but not overly so, its bouncy melody belying the warning that a certain road in Maine is a tough drive for truckers. "If they buried all the truckers lost in them woods, there'd be a tombstone every mile" is right in the sweet spot, a stern warning and amusing hyperbole in one. Curless's deep bass-baritone put him in the same league as Dave Dudley, well-suited for telling about the travails of the trucker. (I love alliteration.) And as a resident of the area, he no doubt knew the dangers of winter driving in the mountains first-hand.
After his big hit, though, Curless never really seemed to catch on. His next single, the lost-love lament "Six Times a Day" (spoiler: he does come back), was his only other song to make it above the Top 20. Despite failing to find another song that caught on the way "Tombstone" did, he kept plugging away for quite some time. Overall, Curless had ten albums for Tower (one with Kay Adams), six for Capitol proper, and many more for independent albums stretching well into the 1990s until Curless ultimately died of stomach cancer in 1995.
Country before the 1970s is not my area of expertise, but even so, I understand that the musical machine was far different than it was now. (For one, I doubt that anyone would get far pressing their own discs themselves and trucking them to several local stations.) However, I'm at a loss as to why Curless did not become the superstar that a song as in tune with the times as "Tombstone" should've made him. Was he so inextricably tied to the song? Did Tower or Capitol not have enough muscle at radio back then? Did people just not want so many songs with "man" in the title? (Seriously, he had five of 'em.) Or were his constant health issues and battle with the bottle dragging him down? Regardless of his lack of longtime success, Curless seems to be a somewhat well-known name to this day, with a fascinating backstory (in particular, I recommend this fascinating first-hand account of Curless: http://billrrrr.hubpages.com/hub/The-Forgotten-Baron-of-Country-Music-Dick-Curless ), a unique image, and a pretty darn good legacy song that allows this child of the 1990s a three-minute trip into the wayback machine.
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