Red Simpson - Roll, Truck, Roll (1966)

Red Simpson's first album of truck songs is a classic, and a fresh, rousing, unpretentious look at the joy, adventure, and loneliness of the road. The title song, authored by Tommy Collins, is the best and most serious song here, with a lot of heart in the writing and in the performance by Simpson -- who speaks part of it with an honesty that a lot of actors would kill to capture in their work -- and it was a Top 40 country hit. Not everything here comes close to the complexity of that number -- there might to one too many songs about drivin' big ol' trucks wherever -- but numbers like "Nitro Express" and (natch) "Six Days on the Road" keep a good beat, and "Truck Driver's Blues," living up to its promise, is a slow honky-tonk number. Hearing this record again after a lot of years, one is sort of sorry that Red Simpson never got together with, say, Commander Cody on an album. © Bruce Eder