From: "Dik de Heer" 
Date: Fri Sep 2, 2005  1:34 am 
Subject: This Is My Story : Dick Curless 

THE LONG LONESOME ROAD OF DICK CURLESS (By Pete Hoppula)

Born Richard William Curless, 17 March 1932, Fort Fairfield, Maine
Died 25 May 1995, Bangor, Maine

The rig traffic was rapidly increasing in America during the sixties - and so
were the trucks themselves: getting ever bigger, heavier and stronger. The
highway network also got wider, which led to longer transportation distances.
For the truck-drivers it meant more lonely hours on the road. The only way in
which they could stay awake through the night, was to listen to music from the
radio stations that started playing music aimed just at them : songs about the
life and hard work of trucking people. In time, all this resulted in the
popularization of trucker country music. WWVA Radio from Wheeling, West
Virginia, used to broadcast a very successful live show, "Truckers Jamboree", in
the early 1970's, and many Southern record labels such as Starday and King
Records released numerous terrific trucker albums. Along with bright new stars,
several former straight country and western or even rock 'n' roll artists found
their way back to the bestselling lists. These names included for instance Red
Simpson, Dave Dudley, Red Sovine, Jerry Reed and one of the greatest, Dick
Curless.

Richard William Curless was born on March 17, 1932 in Fort Fairfield, Maine. He
had a musical background. Maine, located on the Canadian border, was once
colonized by the Acadians, the same clan that became widely known as the Cajuns
in Louisiana. Young Dick heard a lot of Acadian music, as well as country-folk
stuff by Jimmie Rodgers, Josh White and others. His mother played the organ and
his father, who worked as a heavy equipment operator, sang and played the
guitar. In 1940 the Curless family moved to Massachusetts. After his high school
years, Dick joined a local western band called the Trail Riders, and at 17 he
began touring with country singers Yodeling Slim Clark, Hal Lone Pine and Al
Hawkes. A year later, in 1950, Dick moved to Bangor, Maine, but the Trail Riders
continued playing and doing some small-scale tours. Dick made up the stage name
"Tumbleweed Kid", and soon got his own radio show in Ware, Mass. At that time he
made his first recordings for the New York City-based Standard label, and also
met his future bride Pauline, to whom he got married in 1951.

Life seemed to smile at Dick for once, but then somehow all the happiness turned
to a fully opposite direction. Though Dick had a bad eye (which is why he had to
wear an eye-patch) and serious heart problems, he was drafted and sent to the
Korean war in 1952 for two years. He and Pauline had only six months of marriage
behind them, and ironically, now that they had to say goodbye to each other for
a long time, it turned out that Pauline was pregnant! (Pauline gave birth to
Dick's two children, a son Rick, and a daughter Terry.)

For understandable reasons, Dick, who served as a truck-driver, wasn't fighting
all the time in Korea. On the Armed Forces Radio Network he hosted a show as
"The Rice Paddy Ranger", and he also made a popular recording, "China Nights",
under that name. After coming home in 1954, Dick continued to appear in radio
and television shows. He also did some one-night stands in local joints (Silver
Dollar House in Bangor, for example). When his health condition started to fail,
he simply walked away from the spotlights and returned to his home area in
Maine, spending almost a year in the wilderness, totally separated from
publicity and without singing a single note during this time.

In 1956 Dick was invited to New York for a CBS Television's "Arthur Godfrey
Talent Show", where he did a successful performance of 'Nine Pound Hammer'. He
started co-operating with Event Records of Westbrook, Maine, got himself a new
manager, Sol Tepper (who used to take care of Dean Martin's business), and
became an esteemed country and western singer. Unfortunately, the hard work and
stress forced him into another untimely retirement. Living isolated in Maine for
the rest of the year , he finally re-emerged in 1959, and did occasional shows
in Hollywood and Las Vegas. For most of the next five years Dick performed at
the night clubs and hotels around his home town Bangor. In 1960 he toured on the
West Coast for a while, and came home just to find out his home was entirely
wrecked by a hurricane! Ain't that enough bad luck for one man, huh?

Despite the stagnation of his music career, Dick managed to get a chance to make
his first LP. When the Event Records Company split up, and one of its ex-owners
set up a new label out of Boston called Tiffany Records, Dick came along.
Tiffany released only one single by him ("I Dreamed Of A Hillbilly Heaven"/
"Deck Of Cards"), though he recorded lots of excellent material for them. In
1959 these sides were included on his debut album "Dick Curless Sings Songs Of
The Open Country". In the early 1960's Dick didn't cut any new recordings, but
Tiffany continued releasing his previous masters on two other LP's, "Singing
Just For Fun" and "I Love To Tell A Story", the latter containing gospel songs
only.

Around the mid-fifties Dick had become friends with a famous copywriter and
radio personality, Dan Fulkerson, who wrote "A Tombstone Every Mile" for him.
The song told about a very dangerous stretch of highway through the mountain
range of Haynesville Woods, where so many truckers had died that there should be
a tombstone every mile. In 1965, Curless and Fulkerson founded a new label
together, Allagash Records, and a publishing company, Aroostock Music. When "A
Tombstone Every Mile" came out in the same year, it hit the charts like a ton of
bricks. The record's success helped Dick to get a deal with the Capitol
subsidiary Tower Records, which bought the rights to his Tiffany albums, and
reissued them with new titles ("A Tombstone Every Mile" & "Hymns"). The
"Tombstone"-single was also reissued by Tower, and this platter stayed in the
Country Top Ten from the spring until the summer of 1965. Most of his later
Tower 45s also charted well on Billboard's Country Hot 100. Dick Curless was now
one of the hottest names in the country and western market.

"The Soul Of Dick Curless" (1966) was the first Tower album that included new
recordings. Musically it was a very diverse record, containing songs from blues
and gospel to pure rock 'n' roll - but surely not forgetting trucker country!
After this LP Tower released another two compilations from Dick's Tiffany
archives, "Travelin' Man" and "At Home With Dick Curless".

In 1966 Dick was engaged by the "Buck Owens All American Show". He toured all
around the continent for two years (1967-8) before coming back to Maine, and
then continued his own career at full capacity. During this period Dick lived in
Bakersfield, where he also made several new recordings. In 1966 he was the other
half of a duo with Kay Adams on the album "A Devil Like Me Needs An Angel Like
You". In 1967 Dick cut two albums, "All Of Me Belongs To You (House Of
Memories)" and "Ramblin' Country". In 1968 there were two in a row again : "Long
Lonesome Road" and "The Wild Side Of Town". Both LP's were recorded in Nashville
and produced by Jack Clement. Dick's last Tower release was a soundtrack album
of a western flick called "Killers Three", which also featured Merle Haggard,
Kay Adams and Bonnie Owens. The collaboration with Buck Owens was now over
because of a falling-out, and sadly, it made Dick's drinking problem harder than
ever.

Enter the 1970s. (BTW, Dick's complete 1959-69 recordings have been assembled on
a 7-CD Bear Family box-set, "A Tombstone Every Mile", BCD 15882).

Between 1970 and 1973, he had twelve further country hits on Capitol, though
none of them reached the Top 20. In 1973 Capitol released the fabulous live LP
"Live At The Wheeling Truck Drivers Jamboree", produced by Joe Allison, followed
in 1974 by his last Capitol album, prophetically titled "The Last Blues Song".
By then Dick had finally quit drinking. He also moved to Branson, Missouri,
recorded for some indie-labels (Interstate, BD Communications & Audem in 1976)
and toured the Northeast and Canada. In 1975 Dick had most of his stomach
removed, but he never really recovered from his health problems. However, it
didn't prevent him from recording 20 new songs in 1976 at the Hilltop company's
studios in Tennessee with Curtis McPeake & the Nashville Pickers (released only
in Europe on an album called "CB Special"). Soon thereafter Dick experienced a
religious transformation, and retired slowly from the music business, even
though MR Records issued some of his singles in the late 1970's. He was inducted
into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame on April 30, 1978, and got the DECMA
Country Music Pioneer Award in 1982. In 1987 Dick returned and made a new LP in
Norway, with local musicians, "Welcome To My World", which was soon followed by
another, "It's Just A Matter Of Time". In 1989 Dick's own Allagash Records
issued the LP "Close Up", which was a tribute to his all-time singer-songwriter
favourites and colleagues, including Smokey Rogers, Hank Williams, Jimmie
Rodgers, Pee Wee King and Brook Benton (!). By 1992 Dick worked at the Cristy
Lane Theater in Branson, Missouri, and appeared randomly in TV and memorial
concerts. In Germany he was a big star all the way to the end, and in the early
1990's he made his last recordings there, with the German singer Tom Astor. In
1995 the world saw the last comeback of Dick Curless, but tragically it wasn't
meant to last long. The "baron" passed away on May 25, 1995, shattered by
stomach cancer, right after his strongly emotional Rounder album "Traveling
Through" was released.

Text by Pete Hoppula.

Acknowledgements : Ole Romin, Oyvinn Fodstad, Jukka Joutsi & John Morthland.)

Same story with illustrations: http://koti.mbnet.fi/wdd/curlessbio.htm
Discography : http://koti.mbnet.fi/wdd/curless.htm
http://www.wangdangdula.com