Keep On Truckin’

Song 343: This week on the playlist seemed like the right time for Drivin’ My Life Away by Eddie Rabbitt, written by David Malloy, Eddie Rabbitt and Even Stevens. As the 1970s unfolded, the RnR scene seemed to sink deeper and deeper into a sea of slick commerciality, losing much of its soul along the way, but among the occasional bright spots that would still shine in that era came a few courtesy of the country charts, with this one showing up shortly after the turn of the 1980s. While I didn’t recognize Eddie Rabbitt as the writer of the Elvis hit Kentucky Rain, I had become aware of some of his records as he racked up a string of major successes over the previous 2 or 3 years, but this 45 immediately grabbed my attention when it hit the airwaves in the spring, exceeding my expectations, and though he had even greater success with the follow-up I Love a Rainy Night, I soon had my fill of that one, whereas I never tired of hearing this cut. If there’s any truth to the rumor about me playing bass in a country-bar pickup band in the mid-1980s, then it’s quite possible that Eddie’s truck-driving anthem featured prominently in that bar band’s set list. On a side note, this track is a fifth sly reference to the second verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, where the second line begins with But Dwight was only Yoakam when he said Eddie’s Rabbitt died. That line is, by itself, a sly reference to an old pregnancy test, and I did not mean it in any sort of derogatory sense, or as a death wish, but sadly, Mr. Rabbitt did die of lung cancer in May of 1998 at the age of 56. On a happier note, you can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.