Good LORD, what a record.

This thing came out at the height of the southern music thing and right around the height of the popularity of late night trucking shows on places like WRVA, WLW and so on. In the day, WABC and WNBC as well as WLS and WCFL CKLW, CHUM and so on were still playing music and were all over this record, too. It cut across sooooo many musical style lines at once.

A swing across the AM band on a cold winters night, for, quite literally years after it was released, you'd hear at least one signal playing this song, at any hour of the night. Those twin guitars on the long fadeout, straining up over the static and through the phasing of skywave, it took on a sound of power... like the whole country was rocking at once to the thing.The thing was the perfect tune to be rolling through the darkness to some distant destination.

When I was in radio, back in the day when as the jock could pick some of your own tunes, I even played the thing on country stations, because to my ear, it is a country tune. (I"ve seen others such as Hank Williams Jr make the same statement, so I suppose I'm in good company there.

I remember one program director complaining about the song until I showed him the quote in Hank Jr's "Living Proof", which he had, unread, on the shelf behind his desk. Working overnights, though I'd read the thing. He went silent, and shrugged, smiled and poured me a coffee, and told me go back to it. To my amaze the record was in oldie rotation the next day. Apparently I impressed him. He never complained about my music again.