Dave Dudley, 75; Performed ‘Six Days on the Road’ and Other Truck Driving Songs

Dave Dudley, the country music singer regarded by many as the “father of truck driving songs,” has died. He was 75.

Dudley, whose “Six Days on the Road” became a hit record in 1963, died of an apparent heart attack Monday night in Danbury, Wis., his wife, Marie, told Associated Press.

Dudley was born David Darwin Pedruska in Spencer, Wis., and was reared in nearby Stevens Point. Playground chums dubbed him “Duddy,” a nickname that came in handy years later when he picked Dave Dudley as his stage name.

But music wasn’t his first calling -- baseball was. Dudley was a successful pitcher for a semipro team in Texas before an arm injury forced his premature retirement in 1950.

He began his music career singing on a country station while rehabilitating from his arm injury. He formed the Dave Dudley Trio in 1953, and the band stayed together for seven years.

After disbanding that group, he moved to Minneapolis, and formed a band called the Country Gentlemen.

According to “Definitive Country: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Country Music and Its Performers,” Dudley had his first chart success in 1961 when “Maybe I Do” on Vee Records made the Top 30. A year later, his “Under Cover of the Night” on Jubilee Records also was a brisk seller.

In 1963, Dudley was given a recording of “Six Days on the Road,” written by Earl Green and Carl Montgomery. He decided to record the up-tempo tune himself, and it became an instant hit. The recording established his image as a friend of the working class.

Dudley had a number of hits over the next two decades, including “Mad” in 1964, and “Truck Drivin’ Son of a Gun” and “What We’re Fighting For,” both in 1965.

His only No. 1 single was “The Pool Shark” in 1970.

Through the early 1970s, he continued to record songs celebrating the truckers’ view of life. He also developed a large following in Europe, performing there frequently in the 1980s.

Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Dudley returned to the studio to record “Dave Dudley, American Trucker,” a hard-edged tribute to truckers that included two songs talking to terrorists who might want to tangle with the folks who drive big rigs.

Details on his survivors were not immediately available.