Okay, I’ll admit it. Everything I know about CB Radio comes from that episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin sat naked in his basement talking dirty to truckers on the freeway. I honestly had no idea CB radio was mainly used by scantily clad ladies talking about UHF, antenna tuning, and license fees. If I had, well hell, I’d have become a truck drivin’ man and got myself a big rig a long, long time ago.

Breaker. Breaker. Nudge nudge, wink wink

Somehow, I’d (deliberately) forgotten that CB radio was the Twitter of the seventies. No, it was more popular than that. In fact so unbelievably popular that it spawned (and I use that word advisedly here) a string of trucker movies like White Line Fever with Jan-Michael Vincent and Kay Lenz. Smokey and the Bandit with big Burt Reynolds, little Sally Field, and sweaty Jackie Gleason. Maybe hard to believe now but Smokey and the Bandit was the second highest grossing film of 1977 beaten only by Star Wars at the box office.

If that weren’t enough to block your rear view mirror, then there was also Breaker! Breaker! with Chuck Norris, Jonathan Demme’s Citizens Band AKA Handle With Care and something called High Ballin’ with Jerry Reed, Peter Fonda, and Helen Shaver. Even the great Sam Peckinpah (perhaps surprisingly) got in the act with Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, and Ernest Borgnine, based on that unforgettable “classic CB radio” song “Convoy” by C.W McCall. Yeah, that one.

Breaker. Breaker.

Not only were their CB radio/trucker films and records but a whole slew of magazines for the CB enthusiast which generally featured young happy women on the covers with a hot speaker microphone in their hands. Just like these racy covers to Australia’s former #1 citizen’s band radio magazine CB Action. If this doesn’t make you want to take up CB radio immediately then I guess I don’t know what will…
 

 

 
More glossy covers featuring CB enthusiasts, after the jump…