C. W. McCall

William Dale Fries Jr. (November 15, 1928 – April 1, 2022) was an American commercial artist who won several Clio Awards for his advertising campaigns.

He was also a musician and is best known for his character C. W. McCall, a truck-driving country singer that he originally created for a series of bread commercials.

McCall was born Billie Dale Fries on November 15, 1928, in Audubon, Iowa, the son of William Dale "Billie" Fries Sr. and Margaret Fries.

He later legally changed his name to William Dale Fries, Jr. One of his sons is now Bill Fries III.

His family was musical; Bill Sr., a farm equipment factory foreman by day, performed with his two brothers in The Fries Brothers Band and played the violin while Margaret played the piano and the two played ragtime together at dances.

Bill Sr. frequently hauled prefabricated swine barns to customers, which introduced Bill Jr. to the world of trucking.

Bill Jr. first performed at the age of three in a local talent contest, singing "Coming ' Round the Mountain" while his mother played the piano.

He studied music at school, playing the clarinet and the music of John Philip Sousa and became the drum major for the school's marching band.

As a child, he enjoyed listening to country music, but he was even more interested in art, having started copying the cartoon characters of Walt Disney as a child.

He went to the Fine Arts School at the University of Iowa where he majored in commercial art and also performed in the university's symphony orchestra, but he had to leave the university after one year as he could not afford to compete with the many demobbed soldiers who were going through college on the GI Bill of Rights.

He then returned to Audubon to work as a signwriter.

In 1950, he got a job as a commercial artist with KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska.

He worked for them for ten years, doing graphic work, lettering and set design.

He also supported the local ballet and opera societies, doing work which won an award from the Omaha Artists and Art Directors Club.

This attracted the attention of Bozell & Jacobs which was a local advertising agency and they gave him a job as an art director, doubling his salary.

He married Rena Bonnema on February 15, 1952; the two remained married for 70 years until his death.

At the time of his death he had three children, four grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

His hobbies included model railroading and working on his old military jeep.

Fries performed as McCall in a series of outlaw albums and songs in the 1970s, in collaboration with co-worker Chip Davis who also founded Mannheim Steamroller.

In 1973, while working for Bozell & Jacobs, Fries created a television advertising campaign for Old Home Bread.

The bread was trucked across the Midwest from the Metz Baking Company plant in Sioux City, Iowa.

As the big semi-trailer trucks carrying the Old Home Bread logo were a familiar sight on the highway, this suggested a trucking theme.

The advertisements featured deliveries of the bread to the Old Home café, whose name expanded to become the "Old Home Filler-Up an' Keep on a-Truckin' Café".

Its waitress was named Mavis (played by Jean McBride Capps) after a real waitress at the White Spot café in Audubon where Fries grew up.

Her role was to flirt with the truck driver who was named C. W. McCall (played by Jim Finlayson).

The name McCall was inspired by McCall's magazine, which Fries had on his desk at the time.

A James Garner movie, Cash McCall, was also an influence.

To complete the name, Fries added initials, shown embroidered on the trucker's shirt, and chose "C. W." for country and western.

The commercial won a Clio Award and its success led to other trucking songs such as "Wolf Creek Pass" and "Black Bear Road".

Fries wrote the lyrics and sang while Chip Davis, who wrote jingles at Bozell & Jacobs, wrote the music.

McCall's most successful song was "Convoy", a surprise hit in 1975, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number two in the UK Singles Chart in March 1976.

Its theme of using CB radio to rebel against the new federal speed limit of 55 mph was popular and topical so the single sold over two million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA in December 1975.

Though McCall is not a one-hit wonder, "Convoy" went on to become his signature song.

McCall first charted the song "Wolf Creek Pass", which reached No. 40 on the U.S. pop top 40 in 1975.

Two other songs reached the Billboard Hot 100, "Old Home Filler-Up an' Keep on a-Truckin' Cafe", as well as the environmentally-oriented "There Won't Be No Country Music (There Won't Be No Rock 'n' Roll)".

"Classified" and "'Round the World with the Rubber Duck" (a pirate-flavored sequel to "Convoy") bubbled under the Hot 100.

Classically-trained Davis went on to create Mannheim Steamroller and win Country Music Writer of the Year in 1976, despite not liking the genre.

McCall is best known for the 1976 No. 1 hit song, "Convoy" which was inspired by his own experience of driving in a growing group of vehicles out of Denver.

After a successful spell of touring, Fries retired to Ouray, Colorado where he was elected as mayor, serving from 1986 to 1992.

The "Convoy" song became an anthem for the Freedom Convoy protests in 2022 and Fries enjoyed this revival before he died at the age of 93.