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Ted Daffan
One day, back in the late 1930s, musical repair shop owner Ted Daffan stopped to eat at a roadside diner. While consuming his meal, he noticed something – all of the truckers who came into the café did the same thing. They parked their rigs and walked into the restaurant, but before ordering anything, they stopped at the jukebox and put some nickels in to play a song or two. Daffan realized if he wrote a song about those truck drivers, they would spend their nickels playing his song, and he could make some money and become a well-known songwriter. He went home and wrote “Truck Drivers Blues,” acknowledged as the first song written about truck drivers. Cliff Bruner recorded the song, and it became a hit.
Theron (Ted) Eugene Daffan was born September 21, 1912, in Beauregarde Parish, Louisiana. He grew up in East Texas, in the town of Lufkin. He graduated from high school in 1930. The next year, he taught himself how to play Hawaiian guitar. By 1933 he was appearing on KTRH radio in Houston as one of the Blue Islanders. He was also a member of two other bands: the Blue Ridge Playboys and the Bar X Cowboys.
Daffan was interested in electronics, and he experimented with amplifying guitars. He recorded with an amplified steel guitar as early as 1939. The following year he formed a group called the Texans, who remained together for almost 20 years. They signed with Columbia and had a hit with Daffan’s “Worried Mind,” despite competing versions by Bob Wills and Roy Acuff. Another 1940 song was “I’m a Fool to Care,” which was a No. 6 hit for Les Paul & Mary Ford in 1954, and a No. 24 hit for pop singer Joe Barry in 1961.
Billboard published its first country singles chart the week of January 8, 1944, and Daffan’s Texans were on that first survey with “No Letter Today,” an OKeh single that ultimately spent three weeks at No. 2. On the second chart, published January 15, the flip side also appeared: “Born to Lose,” which would become one of Daffan’s most famous songs when recorded by Ray Charles in 1962. Every one of the Texans’ singles to chart on the Billboard country tally made the top 10, including “Look Who’s Talkin’” (No. 4) and “Time Won’t Heal My Broken Heart” (No. 6).
Daffan moved to Southern California in 1944, where his band played the Venice Pier Ballroom until 1946. At the end of the decade, he made regular appearances at the Town Hall Party in Compton. In 1949 he wrote and recorded “I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night.” Faron Young had a top five hit with the song in 1956, and country singer George Jones teamed up with pop singer Gene Pitney for a duet version, which made the top 20 in 1965.
After his stint in Los Angeles, Daffan returned to Texas, where his band played regular dates in cities like Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. He eventually gave up performing and started a publishing company with Hank Snow in Nashville in 1958. Three years later, he started his own music publishing company in Houston.
In 1982, Daffan received a platinum record for Charles’ recording of “Born to Lose,” and 10 years later BMI recognized the song for having one million plays. Daffan was inducted into the Hall of Fame Western Swing Society in 1994. He died in Houston on October 6, 1996.
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