Dave Dudley

American country music singer.
Married to Marie Ann Dudley (1978)

Born May 3, 1928, Spencer, Wisconsin, USA
Died December 22, 2003, Danbury, Wisconsin, USA

Dave Dudley (born David Darwin Pedruska (1928 – 2003) was best known for his truck-driving country anthems of the 1960s and 1970s and his semi-slurred bass. His signature song was "Six Days on the Road." In the original version of the song (the title song of this album) as recorded by Dudley the lyrics include the words "...I'm taking little white pills and my eyes are open wide..." a reference to the stimulants some truckers used to keep driving (and make their delivery times) when they needed sleep. Some remakes of the song replace these words with a reference to looking at the white lines on the road.

Dudley was born to a farm family in Spencer, Wisconsin. At the age of 22, Dave stopped in on an old buddy at radio WTWT. country dee-jay, Vern Sheppard. Dud picked up a guitar that was lying about and started strumming and singing along with the disks. The station boss overheard him and suggested that he practice up a night and come back in the morning and do a program for them. Dave did and the response was positive. Gigs at other stations followed and with things looking quite bright he put together the Dudley Trio to play drinking establishments, watering holes and bars. Dave Dudley released a slew of singles fon the King, Starday, National Recording Corporation, Circle Dot, Vee, and Jubilee record labels between 1955 and 1962. But as he told Vic Willis of The Willis Brothers on television one night in 1963, “None of them were very good.”

Dudley made up for any early career failures that evening when he debuted his signature song “Six Days on the Road,” a cut from his first album, “Dave Dudley Sings ‘Six Days on the Road." The song not only started Dudley on a career focused on the working man and truck-driving songs, but it also landed him the No. 2 position on the Billboard Country Charts and No. 32 on the Billboard US Chart.