C.W. McCall, as noted in the above post, had a string of regional trucker hits before his national breakout, “Convoy.” But he wasn’t a real person. He was created and voiced by Bill Fries, an advertising executive. Originally, he starred in a series of commercials for “Old Home Bread.” Those ads were so well-received by the public that Fries was able to spin off a side career singing trucker songs as his ad icon alter ego. For these records, he teamed up with a jingle writer at the Bozell ad agency named Chip Davis. Davis had another side project he was working on at the time, and used the musicians from that project to play the music behind C.W. McCall.

Eventually Chip Davis’ other project was released to no small acclaim. Not many people realize that C.W. McCall’s back-up bands, The Old Home Band and The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant Boys, were the same group of musicians that’s now known as Mannheim Steamroller.