Today's stroll starts out in the cotton fields of Oklahoma and goes all the way to the Broadway stage of New York City...
Let me introduce you to none other than...
Roger Dean Miller was born January 2, 1936, in Fort Worth, Texas, the youngest of three boys. His father, Jean Miller, died at the age of 26 from spinal meningitis. Roger was only a year old. It was during the depression and Roger's mother, Laudene Holt Miller, was in her early 20's. She was just not able to provide for the boys. So each of Jean's three brothers came and took one of the boys to live with them. Roger moved in with Armelia and Elmer Miller on a farm outside Erick, Oklahoma. Most days were spent in the cotton fields picking cotton or working the land. He never really accepted the separation of his family. He was lonely and unhappy, but his mind took him to places he could only dream about. Walking three miles to his one-room school each day, he started composing songs, the first of which allegedly went a little something like this: "There's a picture on the wall, It's the dearest of them all, Mother"
Roger was a dreamer and his heart was never in pickin' cotton. "It's really a good thing that he made it in the music business 'cause he would have starved to death as a farmer," says entertainer Sheb Wooley (1921-2003), an Erick native who married Roger's cousin, Melva Laure Miller.
A series of events and a little trouble with the law over a stolen guitar led to Roger being in the Army and going to Korea. When he returned he headed straight to Nashville and started writing and struggling, he worked as a bellhop.
Roger's first break finally came when he was hired to play fiddle in Minnie Pearl's road band. His second break came when he met George Jones at the WSM radio station one night and played him some of his songs. Jones then introduced Roger to Don Pierce and Pappy Daily of Mercury-Starday Records and asked them to listen to some of the new kid's material.
His musical career started as a songwriter in the late 1950s, penning such hits as "Billy Bayou" and "Home" for Jim Reeves and "Invitation to the Blues" for Ray Price. As much as he was thrilled with his writing success he wanted to record himself, he now had a wife and a child and felt like he could take this one more leap.
He started a recording career and reached the peak of his fame in the late-1960s, but continued to record and tour into the 1990s, charting his final top 20 country hit "Old Friends" with Willie Nelson in 1982. Later in his life, he wrote the music and lyrics for the 1985 Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River, in which he also acted. He used to joke, "it took me twenty years to become an overnight success."
The one song I think of when I hear the name Roger Miller is, "King of the Road". The highly popular crossover record hit #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on their Country and Easy Listening surveys. It was also #1 in UK and Norway.
My Grandmother loved this song and it's the only record I ever knew of her to play, up until then I didn't even know she had a record player! I can still picture her in her kitchen back in Sulphur Springs (A neighborhood in Tampa), with one hand on her hip and a Lucky Strike in the other one, singing along to this song.
I was also lucky enough to see him on Broadway in Big River...what a night!!
Miller died from lung cancer in 1992, and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later. His songs continued to be recorded by younger artists, with covers of "Tall, Tall Trees" by Alan Jackson and "Husbands and Wives" by Brooks & Dunn, each reaching the number one spot on country charts in the 1990s. The Roger Miller Museum in his home town serves as a tribute to Miller, it is located on historic U.S. Route 66 in downtown Erick, Oklahoma.
Remember... be your own King of the Road.....
