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THETRUCKER.COM
Louisiana-born Ted Daffan (1912-1996) had
already made his mark as a singer/songwriter in
southeast Texas when he pulled into a roadside
diner one evening in 1938.
Little did he know the diner would inspire a
new song — a short, simple tune that would make
Daffan a pioneer of a new category of American
music. Historians agree that when Ted Daffan
went home and penned the lyrics to “Truck
Driver’s Blues,” he gave birth to “truck-driving
music,” a genre that lives on 82 years later.
The irony of the background to “Truck Driver’s
Blues” is that Daffan’s simple observations
and simple lyrics satisfied the needs of a society
in the grips of the Great Depression, a society for
which simplicity was a luxury. In the process, the
song also made Ted Daffan quite wealthy for a
musician of the time.
After graduating from Lufkin (Texas) High
School in 1930, Daffan taught himself to play the
Hawaiian guitar, the metallic sound of Hawaiian
music catching his ear. By 1933, he played well
enough to land a spot with The Blue Islanders,
a band with a regular radio show on Houston’s
KTRH. When The Blue Islanders folded, he
played with other bands such as The Blue Playboys
and The Bar-X Cowboys, signaling a movement
toward western swing.
Daffan held an interest in electronics, particularly
how they could be used to improve instrumental
music. During the 1930s, he experimented
with amplified guitars and operated a shop in
Houston specializing in electrical instruments. By
the end of the decade, Daffan and his amplified
steel guitar blazed a new trail in western swing,
a style of music previously known for its use of
twin fiddles. The steel guitar put the “twang” in
western swing — and eventually in mainstream
country music. Today the instrument is regarded
as one of most difficult to master.
But Daffan was ahead of his time.
Daffan considered himself a songwriter first
and a performer second. “Truck Driver’s Blues,”
the song for which he is arguably best remembered,
took shape two years before he began a
serious recording career. Daffan turned to fiddleplaying
bandleader Cliff Bruner with his song,
hoping Bruner and his Texas Wanderers could
make it suitable for airplay. Likewise, Bruner had
a contract with Decca Records, the label that gave
Bing Crosby his break in the music business.
History proves Daffan made a wise choice.
The story of “Truck Driver’s Blues” is almost
too perfect to be anything but legend, but it is a
story music historians repeat as factual. Daffan’s
stop at the unknown roadside café, perhaps a
precursor to the truck stops of later years, gave
him the chance to observe several truck drivers.
As Daffan waited for his meal he watched, as one
after another, the drivers parked their rigs and
Perspective May 1-14, 2020 • 11
Ted Daffan: Musical pioneer satisfies
society’s simple needs with simple song
Kris Rutherford
krisr@thetrucker.com
Rhythm of
the Road
entered the diner. Before sitting down, every
driver stopped at the jukebox, put in a couple of
nickels and hung around to hear a favorite tune.
Realizing that Depression-era truck drivers
willingly spent five or 10 hard-earned cents
on something as simple as a song gave Daffan
an idea. What would truck drivers pay if one of
those songs in the jukebox focused on the drivers
themselves? As the story goes, Daffan saw dollar
signs — or at least a lot of nickels — all destined
for his pockets.
A few hours later he penned what would become
the first truck-driving song. When the Texas
Wanderers recorded “Truck Driver’s Blues” in
early 1939, it was an instant success. In the early
days of country music, a major hit sold about
5,000 copies. Released on the Decca Records label,
“Truck Driver’s Blues” was not only the top
selling record of 1939, but it also sold a staggering
100,000 copies. Ted Daffan had indeed struck
a chord with a new audience, and in the eight
decades since, many songwriters and performers
have made their marks on music following Daffan’s
lead.
“The blues” had been around a lot longer than
Ted Daffan. In the first few decades of the 20th
century, the blues, a music genre thought to have
originated in Africa, became mainstream. The
Great Depression was a period when most Americans
had a case of the blues, and the songs of the
1930s are nothing less than a musical history of
the years of poverty. Whether the blues performers
sung of breadlines, tax collectors, the Dust
Bowl, prohibition, Wall Street, milk cows or perhaps
the most collective, “The All In and Down
and Out Blues,” the songs struck the collective
nerve of society. Daffan recognized the same look
of “the blues” in the faces of truck drivers.
More than 80 years after The Texas Wanderers
recorded “Truck Driver’s Blues,” the lyrics
are just as applicable as they were in 1939. Drivers
of the 21st century may travel America on
controlled-access highways designed for speed
rather than the winding two-lane roads following
pig trails of days gone by, but the worries of yesteryear
remain alive in the trucking industry.
Like many blues-related songs, “Truck Driver’s
Blues” begins with a familiar line of misery,
“Feelin’ tired and weary.” Beyond those opening
words, however, Daffan sums up the life of a
truck driver in just three short phrases:
“Keep them wheels a-rolling, I ain’t got
no time to lose.
There’s a honky-tonk gal a waitin’ and
I’ve got troubles to drown.
Never did have nothin’, I got nothing
much to lose — just a low-down feelin’, truck
driver’s blues.”
Those sentiments, the same truck drivers have
today, are what “Truck Driver’s Blues” put to
music — no time to lose, troubles to drown and
nothing left to lose (other than the blues).
“Truck Driver’s Blues” is a simple song written
in simple times. And as Daffan discovered
after an evening in a roadside café, satisfying
Americans’ simple desires through simplicity itself
can be lucrative — and groundbreaking.
Until next time, when you’re feeling tired and
weary, stay safe and pull off the highway. Staying
safe can keep the blues at bay. 8
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