 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2016) |
| "Phantom 309" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Red Sovine | |
| Released | 1967 (U.S.) |
| Recorded | 1967 |
| Genre | Truck-driving country |
| Length | 3:23 |
| Label | Starday Records |
| Songwriter(s) | Tommy Faile |
| Producer(s) | Don Pierce [1] |
"Phantom 309" is a song written by Tommy Faile and released as a single by Red Sovine in 1967. It was a minor hit, peaking at number nine on the Billboard Magazine Country chart. The lyrics are spoken, rather than sung.
The song tells of a hitchhiker (the singer, in first person) trying to return home from the West Coast. On the third day of his trip, while at a crossroads in a driving rain, the hitchhiker is picked up by "Big Joe" driving his tractor-trailer named "Phantom 309." After driving through the night, Big Joe drops the hitchhiker off at a truck stop, gives him a dime for a cup of coffee, then disappears out of sight.
Once inside, the hitchhiker tells of Big Joe's generosity and the waiter tells him he had been the beneficiary of a "ghost driver" (a variant of the vanishing hitchhiker/truck driver urban legend). Ten years earlier, at the same intersection where he was picked up, Big Joe had swerved to avoid hitting a school bus full of children because he could not stop due to his truck's momentum. But in doing so, he had lost control of his truck and crashed; he had died in the wreck. The waiter tells the hiker that he was not the first; the ghost of Big Joe had been known to pick up other hitchhikers over the years.
The song was covered with slightly reworked lyrics by Tom Waits in July 1975 at Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles and released in October on his third album, the pseudo-live double-LP Nighthawks at the Diner , under the title "Big Joe and Phantom 309". (To establish mood for the studio audience, Waits refers to the studio as "Raphael's Silver Cloud Lounge" on the album's first track). This version was covered by Archers of Loaf on 1995's Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits.
Other artists who have recorded "Phantom 309" include Dave Dudley, Del Reeves, Ferlin Husky, and Boxcar Willie. Johnny Cash's song "Like The 309", posthumously released in 2006's American V: A Hundred Highways , pays tribute to the original. [ citation needed ] Stan Ridgway's 1986 UK top 5 hit "Camouflage", about a ghostly marine, was inspired in part by this song. In 1981, the Dutch song 'Stille Willie' ('Silent William') by the B.B. Band (Bill Bradley Band) tells the same story. [2]
The song is a version of the Vanishing hitchhiker ghost story, however, the driver, not the hitchhiker, is the ghost.
In the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure , protagonist Pee-wee Herman, hitchhiking at night, is given a ride by trucker Large Marge, who proceeds to tell him of a horrible accident that occurred on the night in question years before, scaring him so that he requests to be let off sooner than he planned. Arriving at a truck stop, she advises him to tell the wait staff that Large Marge sent him, and drives away cackling. When he walks in the restaurant and mentions her name, the staff and regulars confirm that Marge perished in that very accident.
In the movie Trailer Park Boys: Don't Legalize It , "Phantom 309" is the background music to the intro scene at Ray's funeral. The song also reoccurs (continuing where it left off in the intro) later in the film when Bubbles contemplates leaving Ricky and Julian to live in the school bus his parents left him in their will. The song was referenced beforehand in the show as well, during episode 6 of season 5, "Don't Cross the Sh*t Line." While in J-ROCs trailer filming a "greasy film" Ray drinks a whole quart of liquor and rolls backwards into the shot where Bubbles is introducing himself in Trailer Park Girls Gone Wild, where J-ROC calls Ray a ""Phantom 309" lookin' mah-f**ker."
Paul Reubens was an American actor and comedian, widely known for creating and portraying the character Pee-wee Herman.
Pee-wee's Playhouse is an American comedy children's television series starring Paul Reubens as the childlike Pee-wee Herman that ran from 1986 to 1990 on Saturday mornings on CBS, and airing in reruns until July 1991. The show was developed from Reubens's popular stage show and the TV special The Pee-wee Herman Show, produced for HBO, which was similar in style but featured much more adult humor.
Pee-wee's Big Adventure is a 1985 American adventure comedy film directed by Tim Burton in his feature-film directing debut. The film stars Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman, along with E.G. Daily, Mark Holton, Diane Salinger and Judd Omen. The screenplay, written by Reubens with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol, tells the story of Pee-wee's nationwide search for his stolen bicycle and has been compared to the 1948 film Bicycle Thieves.
The vanishing hitchhiker is an urban legend in which people travelling by vehicle, meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle.
Big Top Pee-wee is a 1988 American comedy film directed by Randal Kleiser. A standalone sequel to Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), the film stars Paul Reubens reprising his role as Pee-wee Herman, with Susan Tyrrell, Kris Kristofferson, Penelope Ann Miller and Valeria Golino in supporting roles. The original music score is composed by Danny Elfman, who could not re-use themes from his Pee-wee's Big Adventure score, due to contractual restrictions. The film was released on July 22, 1988, and grossed $15 million against a $20 million budget. Another standalone sequel, Pee-wee's Big Holiday, was released in 2016.
They Drive by Night is a 1940 American film noir directed by Raoul Walsh and starring George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart, and featuring Gale Page, Alan Hale, Roscoe Karns, John Litel and George Tobias. The picture involves a pair of embattled truck drivers and was released in the UK under the title The Road to Frisco. The film was based on A. I. Bezzerides' 1938 novel Long Haul, which was later reprinted under the title They Drive by Night to capitalize on the success of the film.
Woodrow Wilson "Red" Sovine was an American country music singer and songwriter associated with truck-driving country songs, particularly those recited as narratives but set to music. His most noted examples are "Giddyup Go" (1965) and "Teddy Bear" (1976), both of which topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Accompanied recitations of poetry or dramatic texts, most often for spoken voice and piano, became very popular in the nineteenth century as an after dinner entertainment. The genre was often looked down on as something for authors and composers of lesser stature, though there are examples by Robert Schumann and Richard Strauss (Enoch Arden. The English composer Stanley Hawley made many such settings, some of which were performed at the first season of the Henry Wood Proms in London. His friend Lena Ashwell was often the performer.
Dixieland Droopy is a 1954 animated short subject in the Droopy series, directed by Tex Avery and produced by Fred Quimby for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
"Teddy Bear" is a song co-written and recorded by American country music singer Red Sovine. It was released in June 1976 as the title track to Sovine's album of the same name.
"Brake My Wife, Please" is the twentieth episode of the fourteenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 11, 2003. The episode was written by Tim Long and directed by Pete Michels.
"Six Days on the Road" is an American song written by Earl Green and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio songwriter Carl Montgomery, made famous by country music singer Dave Dudley. The song was initially recorded by Paul Davis and released in 1961 on the Bulletin label. In 1963, the song became a major hit when released by Dudley, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and cracking the Top 40 (#32) on the Hot 100, leading to it being hailed as the definitive celebration of the American truck driver.
William "Wee Willie" Grundy Davis was an American film actor and professional wrestler. He was born in New York City and died in Louisville, Kentucky, aged 74.
Truck-driving country or trucker country is a subgenre of country and western music. It is characterized by lyrical content about trucks, truck drivers or truckers, and the trucking industry experience. This includes, for example, references to truck stops, CB radio, trucker jokes, attractive women, romance, heartbreak, loneliness, stimulants and eugeroics, teamsters, roads and highways, billboards, inclement weather, traffic, ICC, DOT, car accidents, washrooms, etc. In truck-driving country, references to "truck" include the following truck types: 10 wheeler, straight truck, 18 wheeler, tractor (bobtail), semi, tractor-trailer, semi tractor trailer, big rig, and some others. Truck-driving country musicians include Dave Dudley, Red Sovine, Terry Fell, Dick Curless, Red Simpson, Del Reeves, the Willis Brothers, Jerry Reed, Commander Cody, C. W. McCall, Mac Wiseman, and Cledus Maggard. Terry Fell released "Truck Drivin' Man" in 1954.
"Giddyup Go" is a country music song made famous by Red Sovine. Released in 1965, the song was the title track to Sovine's album released that same year.
Alice Elizabeth Nunn was an American film and theatre actress. She was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and died at her apartment in West Hollywood, California. Although she played many roles across her 31-year career, appearing in more than 50 films and TV series, she is primarily remembered for her role as Large Marge, the ghost of a storied truck driver, in Tim Burton's 1985 film Pee-wee's Big Adventure, which is number 5 on the IFC list of the 25 scariest moments in non-horror film history, and earned her a cult following.
Deadhead Miles is a 1972 American road comedy film directed by Vernon Zimmerman from a script by Terrence Malick, and starring Alan Arkin and Paul Benedict. Actors Bruce Bennett, George Raft and Ida Lupino make cameos.
Rolling Man is a 1972 American made-for-television drama film directed by Peter Hyams in his directorial debut. It premiered on ABC as the ABC Movie of the Week on October 4, 1972.
Pee-wee's Big Holiday is a 2016 American adventure comedy film directed by John Lee and written by Paul Reubens and Paul Rust. The film stars Reubens as Pee-wee Herman and Joe Manganiello as himself. It is the second standalone sequel to Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) and Big Top Pee-wee (1988), and Reubens' final feature film role before his death in 2023.