C. W. McCall Blaine Sederstrom Who is C. W. McCall and what’s the story behind him? C. W. McCall is actually not a real person. C. W. McCall is truly William D. Fries but just goes by Bill Fries. Bill fries was born November 15, 1928 in Audubon lowa. Audubon lowa is a very small town west of Des Moines surrounded by corn farms. The population was around 2,250 people in 1930 and has declined to about 2000 in 2010. Bill said “He was a child of the Great Depression and his family was not very well off so he said the Great Depression was just ordinary life and they survived it very easily”.
Music was brought into Bill Fries life at a very young age. His dad played the violin and his mom played the piano(thebigfootdiaries. blogspot. com). His Father created a band with his brothers called The Fries Brothers Band where they played for dances all over the country. Bill Fries and his mother played in talent contests ever since he was 3 years old. Bill just had the natural ability to sing and he didn’t know why. (thebigfootdiaries. blogspot. com) After finishing high school Bill attended the university of lowa in lowa city.
While attending the University of Iowa, Fries studied music and played in the school’s concert band, but his major was in fine arts. He only attended the university of lowa for one year because everyone was coming home from the war and there weren’t many jobs so he had no money. He attended the fine arts school his second year which set the foundation for his career in the commercial art and advertising business. He married the love of his life, Rena Jayne in 1949. In 1950, Bill applied his talents in art to Omaha, Nebraska, which is a big city close to Audubon, his home town.
During the 1950’s television we becoming more and more common creating a boom in the film industry. KMTV of Omaha was looking for a commercial artist for their station. He got the job, and made $35 a week – not a bad salary in 1950 (thebigfootdiaries. blogspot. com). That salary didn’t last long as his work increased so did his pay. He enjoyed this job for ten years designing sets, making camera cards, learning about typography, and enjoying the freedom of using his artistic creativity. He also stayed busy doing set designs for the Ballet and the Omaha Civic Opera Society. Once again, though not directly, he was involved in music.
In 1960, executives at Bozell and Jacobs an Omaha advertising agency, saw some work that he had done that had earned him an award from the Omaha Artists and Art Directors Club. They offered Bill a job as Art Director. As this move would double his KMTV salary overnight, Bill thought, Why not? By 1970 he had been promoted to the creative director of the company but in the same year he switched jobs and started working for a little bread company called the Metz Baking Company. Bills job for the bread company was to make a note for their product and advertise it. Bill Fries took matters in his own hands and made the whole advertisement himself.
He came up with a very different idea but it worked very good. He used a semi with big black letters that said Old Home Bread. He had the semi drive south from Sioux City, down 1-29 towards Omaha, and then east onto 1-80. The truck driver would stop at a small little cafe to eat breakfast and drop off bread. (CW-McCall. com) Bill’s next problem was he needed a name for the truck driver. He thought about it for a while and he stumbled across a copy of a McCall magazine and he really liked the name. He thought a little more about what he wanted the advertisement to be.
His goal was for it to be a country and western ad so he came up with C. W. Now bill needed a song for the truck driver. Throughout all of his advertising years he met up with Chip Davis. Chip Davis recently graduated from the university of Michigan. Chip was a drummer for a road show production company. Bill saw Chip Davis Perform and was absolutely amazed. After the show Bill sneaked around and finally found Chip Davis to see if he would be interested in writing music for his commercial. Chip didn’t even studded and immediately said yes and started composing the country/western music for the Old Home Bread commercial.
Bill couldn’t find anyone with a deep enough voice that he liked so he recorded the music for his commercial and just had his actor lip sing it. It was instantly a huge success and that’s when his music career started. Bill Fries and Chip Davis were a perfect match for each other. Both of them were young and very eager and rarely turned new opportunities down. They always said “why not” and went ahead and tried new things. Their first song “old Home Fill’er up and keep on trucking Cafe” was a big hit and shot to number 10 on the Billboard country charts. MGM told them to make an album, and to say the least they took on the challenge.
He started writing songs that were based on places he live, places he had been, and people he knew. He made an album called “Wolf Creek Pass” which is a place in Colorado he like to visit. Bill Fries song Wolf Creek Pass tell the story of a trucker hauling chickens over the pass. His music was very different in the fact he told stories in his music not just make things up. Bill Fries and Chip Davis wrote around 70 songs together of which 50 they recorded. They weren’t the ordinary country songs but they definitely didn’t go along in the pop category either.
They considered themselves the in between but more country than pop. Bill Fries was a very successful singer song writer for the few years he did it. His song “wolf creek pass” was like gold which made MGM come running back to Bill and Chip. They signed a five year contract including 4 more contracts. Their first album under the contract was black bear road. The album too the story of people adventuring the San Juan mountains in southwestern Colorado in a jeep. Black bear road was moderately successful on the country music billboards but nothing great.
On the other side of the fence they recorded a ong called “convoy”. When the DJ’s finally starting playing it they were all completely shocked. It was a MAJOR hit. All switchboards lit up. By January 1, 1976 it had reached the top spot on the billboards country charts as well as pop charts. It was number 1 in both categories for 6 weeks selling 2 million copies. People got hooked on C. W. McCall and his album Black Bear Road because extremely successful. He fulfilled his contract and by the end of the five years he gave himself the name C. W. McCall. He didn’t renew the contract but moved on with his life into the film industry.
He was hired on by Polydor Records where they wanted to make a movie about the song convoy. McCall loved it. He changed the original “convoy” to make it fit the movie better and when it was all set and done the movie convoy was a huge success. Convoy made over 45 million dollars at the box offices which was huge in the 1970’s. It was one of “penkinpah’s most successful film and set the peak of the CB radio fad and C. W. McCall’s musical career”. In 1980 Bill Fries had filled his contract with Polydor Records. He was 52 years old in 1980 and had a pretty successful life with lots of achievements.
He was to the point traveling and always being in the spot light wasn’t filling the desires of his heart so he retired and him and his wife moved to Ouray Colorado. Ouray is another small town. He didn’t like the big cities. Him and his wife lived a very simple life for 6 years enjoying the hot springs and little activities Ouray offered. In 1986 one of Bills friends asked him to run for the town mayor and bill used his good ol saying “why not” and became the mayor. The city hall of Ouray had burned down in 1950 and that was one of Bill’s goals was to rebuild it. www. imdb. com)
Bill Fries had such a name from his musical career he was able to generate the funds after 3 terms to rebuild the city hall. He received money from all over the United States and even people in Europe. It was one of his goals because a lot of his songs were about Colorado and he loved the fact he was helping a Colorado town out. Not everyone agreed with rebuilding the city hall but in the end it was great for the economy of Ouray. Ouray was a town of 1000 people and after the new city hall it was a pretty big tourist attraction.
Bill then produced a digital version of the San Juan odyssey for the main stream theater in Ouray. It sold copies like crazy and you can still watch the film to this day at the theater. Bill Fries had a very successful life and basically just went with the flow. He never had any intentions of being a musician but he definetly had a great career considering what he came from. I picked C. W. McCall because I like his music and I like how he viewed his opportunities. Bill Fries was one of them guys that might go broke 10 times but with his ambition he would be a millionaire 11 times.
