A little tip of the hat to Gene Tracy, known as "Mr. Truck-Stop", "Ol' Red Eyes" and "King Of The Truck-Stop". This guy and his humor was completely non-PC, consisting of filthy jokes about perverted truck drivers, hapless harelips, whorehouses, drunks, foul-mouthed little kids, and much more that would turn a sailor's face red to be hearing such filth.
My Dad used to have a few of his tapes in the '70s, but I think I heard the jokes coming from him more than the actual recordings. A lot of Gene's little terms were in my Dad's vocabulary for years, such as a fart "knock[ing] the sheets off the bed!" or "peeling the paint off the walls!".
Gene's output was primarily on the then-popular 8-Track tape format. I found my first one back in November of 1990, and every great once in a while, I'll find yet another "new" one to add to the collection whenever I find one at, say, the local Goodwill or Value Village store.
But in the late '70s, I was much too young to be listening to his stuff...yet I
did hear it couple of times during little parties when family friends would be over for a few beers and maybe a few joints. I didn't understand the references he was making then; all I heard was a loud guy with a southern accent, sounding like he was a few sails into the wind, and the loud, rowdy audience was just as inebriated as him (if not more so), cackling like mad at his jokes the whole time. The one aspect that always struck me as odd was that, on a couple of the tapes, he had a bass player and drummer, tapping along with a little shuffle rhythm behind him the whole time. I remember thinking that maybe the tape was defective, or wasn't erased properly. Flash forward almost 30 years later, finding tapes #4 and #5 and playing them, there it is--just as I remembered hearing, so I wasn't imagining that after all!
I'm sure if my Dad were still here, he'd still be telling the old jokes around the house, and eventually telling Geoffrey and his buddies about the Twelve Martinis or the Avon Lady farting in the elevator or "Gimme A Cup Of Coffee and P.I.S.S!". before I could stop him!
