Trivia / C. W. McCall

• Breakaway Advertisement: C.W. McCall was a truck driver in commercials for Old Home Bread in the early 1970s whose flirty adventures with a truck-stop waitress named Mavis were told through a talk-singing Country Rap sung by Fries. A single based on the soundtrack became so successful in the markets where the bread was sold that Fries assumed the C.W. McCall persona and (with the help of Chip Davis, who wrote the music and later formed Mannheim Steamroller) had a real-life musical career.
• He Also Did:
  • C.W. McCall was technically a character played by Bill Fries, who worked at the Bozell & Jacobs ad agency in Omaha, Nebraska, having started out as an art director and eventually working his way up to an executive position. After Fries retired he moved to the small mountain town of Ouray, Colorado and served two terms as its mayor.
  • Chip Davis, who also worked at Bozell, produced and co-wrote all of McCall's music at the same time he was launching Mannheim Steamroller. Most of the Mannheim Steamroller musicians also played on McCall's songs.
  • Fries contributed poetry to Mannheim Steamroller's first Fresh Aire album that accompanied the various moods of the songs and told a birth-to-death story. They weren't sung, but were printed on the album's back cover.
• One-Hit Wonder: "Convoy" makes McCall a Billboard Hot 100 example, since it hit #1, and he only had one other pop Top 40 hit ("Wolf Creek Pass", the immediate predecessor to "Convoy"), which stalled out at #40. He had nine Top 40 hits on the Country chart, with "Convoy" hitting #1 on there as well, but the sentimental "Roses for Mama" in 1977 was his only other Country Top 10. Internationally he counts as well, with "Convoy" hitting #1 in several countries, while he never had another hit in any of them.