Songs Of The Highway, No. 1: 'Wreck on the Mountain Road,' by the Red Fox Chasers

What was the first recorded trucking song? According to Todd Uhlman, an assistant professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” recorded by the Red Fox Chasers in 1928, may well have set the stage for many such songs to come. Such trivia is only a small part of what Uhlman academic specialty has uncovered -- he places trucking songs in the context of U.S. socio-cultural history, explaining how each song reflects something of the trucking industry and culture at the time of its release.

This year, as Overdrive shares pieces of trucking history in weekly installments attendant to our 60th anniversary celebration, we’ll hear more from Uhlman in this new "Songs of the Highway" podcast series of shorts from Overdrive Radio, about a variety of important trucking songs -- some familiar, some not.

The Chasers’ song “tells the real-life story of a trucker named Lonnie Brown who died in an accident on Bent Mountain in Southwest Virginia,” Uhlman wrote in the journal. The song followed a similar one about a newsmaking 1903 train wreck at Stillhouse Trestle in Virginia.

Listen to learn more about the historic “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” including a few clips from it, and thoughts about truckers’ interest in the prospects of dying on the job.

Find links to the entire song, likewise the Chasers' record “I'm Going Down to North Carolina: The Complete Recordings of the Red Fox Chasers (1928-1931)" via this link to our coverage at Overdrive: http://overdriveonline.com/14898500

Follow this link for more in our weekly 60th-anniversary series probing the history of Overdrive and trucking: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4406897

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