Pure Country

[Colt1861Navy]

ROGER MILLER

In many ways, Roger Miller was pure country. He had a cornpone sense of humor. His vocal twang was as thick as a Tennessee thicket. His music was always simple and straightforward. But in the 160s, Miller created a body of songs that transcended their country roots and became vastly popular in the cultural mainstream.

Miller was born on January 2, 1936, in Fort Worth, Texas. He was raised mostly in the small town of Erick, Oklahoma, where it is said that he gave his first performance at age five at his uncle's one-room schoolhouse. Bur from the star, Miller seemed to know that there was more to life than the proverbial sticks. "I grew up not wanting to pull cotton or milk cows," he old writer Vernell Hackett of American Song-writer magazine in 1988. "I wanted to write songs and be in the music business. There was something magic about the music business."

He spent a year as a ranch hand and, later, served three years with the U.S. Army in Korea. But after he was discharged, he made his way to Nashville to ply his songwriting trade. That trade didn't materialize right away. He spend a year as a bellhop at Nashville's Andrew Jackson Hotel. But by the bid- ;50s, Miller had begun making a name for himself in the music business. At the time he wrote about 150 songs that were recorded by the likes of George Jones, Ernest Tubb, and others. In 1958, miller finally hit it big when his song "Invitation to the Blues" became a hit for Ray Price. By 1960 he had a contract of his own with RCA. He had modest hits at the start of the decade with songs like "You Don't Want My Love" and "When Two Worlds Collide."

But in 1964, Miller began a run on the charts that would make him one of the biggest country artists of the decade. The first hit, "Dang Me," was a lively bit of hokum pulled straight out of country vaudeville. Bit also had a lithe pop sensibility that appealed to the mainstream record-buying public.

As the 1960s progressed, Miller hit the charts again and again with that same winning combination of wry wit and immediately hummable, hook laden melodies. "Kansas City Star," "Chug-a-lug," "Buffalo Herd," and a host of others had the whole country singing and smiling along. "I don't know what makes a good songwriter," Miller said at one point, "except a good heart and a little intelligence." In his biting, tongue-in-cheek songs from the '60s, Miller displayed both.

While Miller recorded mostly his own songs he also recognized talent in others. He was one of the first artists to record a song written by the fledgling Kris Kristofferson. In, 1969, Miller's version of Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" hit number 12 on the country charts - preceding Janis Joplin's chart-topping version by a year.

Toward the end of the 1960s, however, Miller's career began to decline. While he continued to record, the hits stopped coming for the most part. And he increasingly spent time overseeing his hotel chain, named after one of his hits, King of the Road. He did make a comeback of sorts when he recorded the 1983 album Old Friends with Ray Price and Willie Nelson.

Miller, who had previously written songs for the film Waterhole 3 and a version of Robin Hood by Walt Disney, moved in a new direction in the middle 1980s when he agreed to write the score for the splashy 1985 Broadway musical Big River. Based on the writings of Mark Twain, Big River became a big hit and won seven Tony awards, including those for best musical and outstanding score. It would be the last great hurrah in Miller's career. He died of cancer on October 25, 1992.

TOP SONGS
Dang Me (Smash, '64)
Chug-A-Lug (Smash, '64)
King of the road (Smash, '65)
Engine #9, (Smash, '65)
Kansas City Star (Smash, '65)
England Swings (Smash, '65)
Husbands and Wives (Smash, '66)



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