Single and Album History
The song was taken from the American Beauty album and edited down in length from five to three minutes for release as a single. In addition to being shorter, the single version had some audible differences compared to the album version: it featured sections of lead guitar in places where it's faded down on the album version, and has a strongly processed verse vocal, different vocal track for the "Sometimes the lights..." portion, and is missing the album version's organ part.
The single reached number 64 on January 27, 1971 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart and stayed there for eight weeks. "Truckin'" was the highest-charting pop single the group would have until the surprise top-ten performance of "Touch of Grey" 17 years later.
The song was influenced by a dance from the twenties called "jiggeln'". It was more influenced by underground comix artist R. Crumb's drawing "Keep on Truckin'" that appeared in Zap Comix #1, released in San Francisco in 1968.
Read more about this topic: Truckin'
Famous quotes containing the words single, album and/or history:
“I can’t think of a single supposedly Black issue that hasn’t wasted the original Black target group and then spread like the measles to outlying white experience.”
—June Jordan (b. 1936)
“What a long strange trip it’s been.”
—Robert Hunter, U.S. rock lyricist. “Truckin’,” on the Grateful Dead album American Beauty (1971)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)