Dave Dudley tribute from his adopted hometown
Hoodude
Special to The Gazette
http://www.pcgazette.com/news/2004/jan04/dudley1-02.htm
Dave Dudley, Stevens Point's gift to country music, died Monday, Dec.
22, in his adopted home of Danbury in northwest Wisconsin. He was 77.
Dudley was born Darwin David Pudraska in Spencer, but he moved to
Stevens Point early in life with his parents, grew up on Strongs
Avenue near the Congress Club and launched his musical career from
here.
He gained national and international fame in 1963 with the song "Six
Days on the Road" and was credited with paving the way for a genre of
country music that put the spotlight on the ups and downs of the
truck-driving lifestyle. He was also known as the voice of working
people as he charted more than 41 country hits between 1961 and 1980.
He recorded more than 70 albums in his career and wrote hundreds of
songs. Known for his good-natured style and hard-work, Dudley stayed
active musically all of his life. He was working on a new double-CD at
the time of his death. Much of the material was to come from
recordings Dudley made for European audiences. He toured in Europe in
the 1980s and 1990s, and had a strong fan base there.
Dudley had kept his primary residence in Danbury since 1969.
His wife of 25 years, Marie, said that Dudley likely suffered a heart
attack while engaging the four-wheel drive on his pickup truck outside
the Fish Bowl Bar and Restaurant in Danbury. Dudley frequently visited
the local gathering spot for a beer and conversation with friends
before heading home for supper with his wife.
Speaking on the day after Dudley's death, Marie said, "He's on the
road for a few days, so I won't have to pick up after him for awhile.
I miss the heck out of him already."
Family and friends agreed that there was something special about
Dudley that went beyond being a talented musician. "He was a good guy.
I loved him, and I don't know what do without him. I'm going to miss
him terribly," said his sister, Frances Harder of Waupaca.
Dudley was a popular local performer in the 1950s. Chuck Nason of
Stevens Point was a child when Dudley performed around here, but Nason
recalls him well. "Everybody knew him," Nason said. "You were so glad
he was around here, yet you were willing to share him with the world."
"He was a fun guy to be around. That was his first character," said
Dick Pudroski of Stevens Point, a first cousin.
News of Dudley's death broke Tuesday, Dec. 23. Shortly after AP
reporter Bob Imrie filed the story from Wausau, media sources around
the country picked it up. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune was first to go
with the story on its Web site. Within a few hours, The New York Times
had a Dudley feature in its Arts section.
Reporter Phil Sweetland wrote, "His influence on American culture went
beyond music; his portrayal of truckers as independent, outspoken
heroes facing impossible odds was later incorporated into popular
movies like 'Smokey and the Bandit' (1977)."
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interviewed Eddie Stubbs, a Grand Ole
Opry announcer and radio personality for WSM-AM in Nashville, Tenn. He
told the newspaper that Dudley "had many hit records, but the songs he
did related to trucking were really his best remembered. He was at the
forefront of a movement or trend, if you will, in country music, where
it was popular to record songs about trucking. There was a number of
people who followed suit thereafter and had a lot of success with
songs in that fashion."
Stubbs said the radio station where he works, which is the home of the
Grand Ole Opry, still spins Dudley's records daily.
In an interview with The Gazette at his Danbury home in March 2000,
Dudley attributed some of his musical success to misfortune in another
arena. "I was a busted-down ballplayer," he said.
Locals remember that Dudley could pitch a baseball like no one else
around here when he was growing up. He got noticed enough on the local
amateur scene that the New York Yankees sought his option in 1942. In
The Gazette interview, Dudley noted that the Yankees had to contact
his mother, Mildred, in Stevens Point. Dudley was in the South Pacific
with the Navy. He had talked his mom into signing him up at 17. She
also signed the baseball option. The Yankees shuffled him to the
Chicago White Sox, who sent him down to the Gainesville Owls in Texas
when he got back from service.
He injured his arm in Texas and came back to Point, to work in the Soo
Line Railroad yards. But Dudley could also play guitar and sing with a
booming voice, and he was a good entertainer. Soon he was playing gigs
around the area.
George Rogers of Stevens Point remembers attending some of those
Dudley performances, in the early 1950s. "He used to perform at the
Platwood. He was pretty good. He knew a lot of people and would throw
in names from the crowd. He connected with his audiences," Rogers
said.
Dudley had formed the Dave Dudley Trio by then, a group that ran from
1950 to '57.
Pudroski remembers technically being part of the first trio, although
the group of high schoolers never played in public.
"Dave, Ronnie Dzwonkowski and I were the original trio. We had one
room in mom's house on Smith Street, and we'd get together on Sundays,
close the door and play there the whole afternoon." "Dud," as the boys
called him, was on guitar, Dzwonkowski, violin, and Dick on
piano/accordion.
Pudroski later moved to Milwaukee, where he lived and worked for 28
years before returning to Stevens Point. Like his cousin, he stayed
with music, entertaining as part of trios or duos in the Milwaukee and
Stevens Point areas. He still entertains at area nursing homes. His
instrument of choice for much of that time has been the concertina. He
stayed in close touch with Dudley through the years. "He was just No.
1. He and I called back and forth all the time," Pudroski said.
In addition to being a musician, Dudley was a disc jockey throughout
the Midwest. He got his start at WTWT in Stevens Point. That station
would later become WSPT.
Program manager Vern Sheppard first asked Dudley to sing on air.
Afraid that he might lose his railroad job, Dudley went by the name of
"The Texas Stranger."
"I remember sitting in the corner at the Unique Bar drinking a beer,
and I heard people say, 'Hey, who's this Texas Stranger?'" Dudley
recalled in The Gazette interview.
Jim Schuh of Plover recalled that Dudley stopped by a local radio
station while visiting his mother in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Schuh was managing WSPT-WXYQ radio at the time. "He surprised us at
WXYQ, then an AM country music station," Schuh said. "He was driving a
big, red Cadillac, pulling a trailer. He spent part of the afternoon
sitting in with one of the country DJs, recalling his career and his
days working at the station when it was WTWT."
"Six Days on the Road" was recorded a couple of years after Dudley was
seriously injured in a hit-and-run incident outside a Minneapolis
night club, The Flame. An insurance settlement helped Dudley fund the
recording of an album. Grand Ole Opre star Jimmy C. Newman had passed
the song "Six Days on the Road" to Dudley a couple of years earlier.
It was written by Earl Green and Carl Montgomery. The song was among
the first crossover country/pop hits, reaching No. 2 in country and 32
on the pop chart.
Soon after, Dudley signed with Mercury Records and released "Songs of
the Working Men," which contained "Six Days." Dudley was on the road
then. In addition to the Dave Dudley Trio, he fronted groups that were
called the Country Gentlemen and Dave Dudley and the Roadrunners. He
toured heavily, one year logging more than 200 gigs.
The New York Times' Sweetland wrote this about what happened after
Dudley made it with "Six Days": "He became a national star, and his
other hits included 'Mad' (No. 6 on the Billboard country singles
chart, 1964), 'Truck Drivin' Son of a Gun' (No. 3, 1965), 'What We're
Fighting For' (No. 4, 1965), 'Vietnam Blues' (No. 12, 1966), 'There
Ain't No Easy Run' (No. 10, 1968) and 'The Pool Shark' (his only No. 1
single, 1970)."
Dudley's talents and feel for people were matched with a strong work
ethic, friends and family recalled this week.
"He had a long, tough life before he made it at all," said Pudroski.
"He didn't give up. He just kept working."
Dudley saw it this way: "I took all the knocks I could get, and I
still believed I could do it. Tom T. Hall used to work for me, playing
piano. He wrote a book, and about me, he said when I was taking a
10-minute nap he swore I was thinking about what I was going to do
when I got up."
All the while, Dudley never lost touch with the common folks. "I let
people take pictures and I signed autographs until the last one was
signed," he said.