Guy Drake says that his family was so poor that “poverty was born in our back yard.” At age eleven, he got his first paying job, $6.00 a week to help support the family after his father died.

According to Guy, he's been everything from a railroad brakeman to a steeplejack and even held some jobs that didn't even have a name. For example: what do you call a man who paints stripes on a supermarket parking lot?

Guy says his 1970’s hit, “Welfare Cadillac,” helped him make a fool out of the “big Nashville cats.” Drake says he wrote the song back in his hometown of Greenville, Kentucky. He thought the song was a hit so he decided to try his luck in Nashville but all the Nashville music executives laughed at the song and turned it down.

Guy commented, “So I recorded the song and my wife and I hit the road with our car full of records and hand delivered them to all the radio stations we could get to in the South. We did that for three weeks and at the end of that three weeks, most all of the stations we had been to were playing the record, and made it a hit! It made me feel real good to make a fool out of those big Nashville cats.”

“Welfare Cadillac” entered the country music charts January 10th, 1970 and peaked at # six. It was on the charts for 14 weeks.

Doug Davis
Country Music Classics