Red Sovine – Teddy Bear - Bohemia Afterdark

Description

“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.

The song — actually, a recitation with an instrumental backing — was one of Sovine’s many recordings that saluted the American truck driver. “Teddy Bear,” released during the height of the citizens’ band radio craze of the mid-1970s, is titled after the song’s main character, a young paraplegic boy whose semi-trailer truck-driving father had been killed in a road accident, and is left with a CB radio to keep him company.

Content

In the song, the little boy, who refers to himself as “Teddy Bear”, gets on the CB radio and asks for somebody to talk to him. The narrator (also an over-the-road truck driver) answers Teddy Bear’s call, and listens as the boy tells a heart-rending tale. Aside from his health and the father being deceased, his mother has been forced into the workplace to provide a meager income. Teddy Bear then says his wish had been to go for a ride in a tractor-semitrailer truck (he and his mother were to have joined the father on the road that summer), and is resigned to never getting to realize his dream.

The narrator is so taken by his tale that he decides to risk being late with his delivery to answer the boy’s dream. However, when he arrives at the boy’s home (“Jackson Street, 229”), numerous truck drivers — who also have been listening to Teddy Bear’s call — are lined up at the boy’s home, giving him rides in their trucks. The boy thoroughly enjoys his experience.

At the end of the day, the truckers take up a collection for Teddy Bear’s mother. Later, his mother (“Mama Teddy Bear”) goes on the air to express her gratitude, telling them Teddy Bear’s dream had just come true. She offers a special prayer to the truckers for their act of kindness.

“Teddy Bear”