Redeeming Roger Miller

Ostensibly presiding over the Road of which he may or may not have been King

Not that Roger Miller (1936-1992) did anything in particular so awful that I know of that requires redemption. His worst sin perhaps was allowing himself to be goofy for the amusement of audiences, permitting some to dismiss him as a fool rather than the brilliant writer/performer that he was. Another one is in having a hit song of such magnitude that it causes many to assume him to have been a one-hit wonder, which he manifestly was not. He had numerous charting songs including several top tens over a two-year period followed by high visibility in film, tv and even Broadway over 30 years. But that one song…it’s a Mount Everest of a song. When you look at it, it’s hard to see any other mountain.

Miller was an Oklahoma farm boy who had the good fortune to be the cousin of a gal who was married to Sheb Wooley, who had a hit with “Purple People Eater”. But Miller had been compulsively writing songs since childhood. He learned to play guitar and fiddle. In the army he met the brother of Jethro of Homer and Jethro, an act widely known as the “Thinking Man’s Hillbillies”, and was persuaded to try his luck in Nashville. There he played fiddle in Minnie Pearl’s band, got encouragement and help from the likes of Chet Atkins and George Jones. He joined Ray Price’s band the Cherokee Cowboys, and Price recorded some of his early songs as did major country artists like Ernest Tubbs, Jim Reeves, and Bill Anderson. He was briefly in a duo with Donny Lyttle, better known as Johnny Paycheck.

In the mid ’60s Miller moved to Hollywood and signed with Smash Records, a subsidiary of Mercury, and began the string of novelty crossover hits that made him nationally known. They included “Dang Me” (#7, 1964), “Chug-a-Lug” (#9, 1964), “Do-Wacka-Do” (#31, 1965), “Engine Engine #9” (#7, 1965), “Kansas City Star” (#31, 1965), “England Swings” (#8, 1965), and “Husbands and Wives” (#26, 1966). He was actually a terrific lyricist and was extraordinarily prolific in starting songs, but often had trouble finishing them, a hurdle he seems to have cleared by scatting and setting stretches of melody to nonsense syllables, which became a kind of trademark.

And now the hit to which I alluded. It is of course “King of the Road”, which went to #4 on the pop charts in 1965 and won 5 Grammys. I’m shocked that it only went to #4, because it’s one of those songs whose reach was long. Many covered it, it was often used in movies and television, and it sort of captured the cultural moment. Though Miller wasn’t a folksinger per se, I associate it with the folk music revival, with the imagery of this rambling hobo-like traveler, riding the rails, in the vein of everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Bob Dylan. Takes odd jobs, stays in SROs, steals when he has to. It also reminds me of that show Route 66 which had gone off the air shortly before this song came out, though the guys on that show are a little more privileged. But they choose to be drifters, that’s the point of the song. The drop-out philosophy behind it gathered steam throughout the decade and into the early part of the next one.

Naturally his popularity was accompanied by TV appearances on programs like The Tonight Show with Jack Paar and The Andy Williams Show. This led to his own variety vehicle The Roger Miller Show, which ran on NBC for 17 weeks in 1966 and early 1967, with guests like Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Burns and Schreiber, Frank Gorshin, Petula Clark, Liberace etc. In 1967, he played the Balladeer in Waterhole #3, establishing him in the kind of role he would play in movies and TV more than once. In the late ’60s he continued to appear on shows like The Hollywood Palace, Kraft Music Hall, The Dean Martin Show,The Joey Bishop Show,The Johnny Cash Show,The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and many others. In 1968 he recorded the first version of Bobby Russel’s “Little Green Apples”, which proved a bigger hit for O.C. Smith. The following year he covered Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”, which was a much bigger hit for Janis Joplin.

Miller also took up acting at around this time, playing Johnny Appleseed on Daniel Boone (1969), and a role on Love American Style (1970). In 1973 he voiced Rooster/Narrator Alan-a-Dale in Walt Disney’s inexplicably countrified version of Robin Hood. He was also the narrator Spieltoe in Rankin-Bass’sNestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977) and narrated the 1981 animated TV movie The Trolls and the Christmas Express. He was also the narrator “Jolly Jumper” on the 1991 western series Lucky Luke. People simply liked and trusted his voice, I think.

In 1978 Miller starred in a pilot for a show based on “King of the Road” which wasn’t picked up. And he continued to appear on programs like Quincy and Murder, She Wrote. During this period he was also on The Muppet Show, which I most assuredly saw.

In 1985 another huge high water mark (ha! I said “high water”!) for Miller. He wrote the songs for the Broadway musical Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which ran for two solid years. He also went into the cast for Pap after John Goodman dropped out to take a movie role. The show was later revived on Broadway in 2003 and toured nationally.

The thematic connection between the Road and the River is obvious. This idea, coupled with Miller’s demand as a balladeer and narrator and storyteller in films confers upon a status not unlike a medieval bard or minstrel, which makes his presence in Robin Hood maybe not as inexplicable as I once regarded it. Still not clear though on why he’s a rooster.

For more on the history of variety entertainment, including tv variety, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.