“The Pool Shark”
Dave Dudley
Written by Tom T. Hall
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
May 9, 1970
Dave Dudley will always be best known for “Six Days On the Road,” but he earned his only No. 1 hit a few years after that seminal sixties hit with a Tom T. Hall song that borrows heavily from a Johnny Cash classic.
Dudley hailed from Wisconsin, and had been toiling away for several years with unsuccessful singles before he finally cracked the top twenty with “Under Cover of the Night” in 1962. “Six Days On the Road” followed after, earning him a gold record and establishing his bass-laden spoken word style. Dudley was a constant presence on radio afterward, scoring several top ten hits before borrowing from the Tom T. Hall catalog for his only chart topper.
The lovable loser of “The Pool Shark” is classic Hall. He tells the song from the perspective of the guy who gets hustled, and it’s hilarious how listeners see that hustle coming but our narrator remains blissfully oblivious. The coda at the end that has him going after the waitress is a clever touch.
The combination of the song’s rhythm and Dudley’s booming voice makes “The Pool Shark” sound way too similar to “A Boy Named Sue,” and it also manages to make Dolly Parton’s “Joshua” sound like a ripoff of “The Pool Shark.” But derivative as the arrangement might be, the unique storytelling still makes this one stand out.
Dudley would remain a presence on radio until the mid-seventies with his final top twenty hit, “Me and Ole C.B.” He remained a popular touring artist in the decades that followed, building up a strong following in Europe that reconnected him to his family’s East German roots. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 75.
“The Pool Shark” gets a B+.
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I believe it was Kinky Friedman who said, “I love all of Tom T. Hall’s stories and both his melodies.”
This was the first time I heard this song and it sounds like Dudley is in full service of Hall’s lyrics,; they do all the heavy lifting here.
I love the expectation of having to pay attention to what is being said or sung.
While this was Dave Dudley’s only #1 recording, he had 17 top ten recordings hit the top ten. “Six Days On The Road” hit #1 in virtually every market but at different times, resulting in the song only reaching #2 on Billboard and Record World during its 21-week Record World and Billboard country chart runs.
Dave Dudley had one of the most recognizable voices in country music, one described as the sound of “too much coffee and too many cigarettes at truck stops at three in the morning”. Dave was a very good at ballads and up-tempo songs; however, spoken word songs like “The Pool Shark” were completely in his wheelhouse. I would give this song a solid “A” although I do not regard this song as being one of his ten best.
I love the writing of Tom T. Hall and this is a good song. I see only slight similarities between this song and Dolly’s Joshua. Hardly would say a rip-off. I will say Dolly (at her best) always had similarities to Tom T.