Roger Miller grew up a shy boy in Erick, Oklahoma, and despite his lack of discipline and wild ways, managed to carve out a hell of a career. He was one of the most successful country songwriters of the 1950's, before embarking on a solo recording career in 1958. He failed to have any early success, and in 1963 accepted $1600 from Smash Records in return for recording sixteen songs, which he hoped to use as seed money to go to Hollywood and try to become an actor. Fate had other plans, and his first album for Smash yielded the hit "Dang Me" which became his first #1 Country single and led to his winning 5 Grammy Awards in 1964. The next year he released another album, had another #1 Country single with this week's tune, and collected six more Grammy Awards. While Miller would never again have quite the same level of success, he would release a number of songs that hit the Country charts. In the early eighties Miller stepped away from the music industry for a few years but came back when he was asked to write a score for a Broadway musical based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It took him a couple of years, but the result was Big River, which earned a Tony for best musical, and a Tony for Miller himself for best score. Over the course of his career, Miller released 20 albums, had three #1 hits, had four other #1 hits recorded by other artists, and won 11 Grammys. Sadly, Miller, a lifelong smoker, succumbed to lung cancer in 1996 at the all too young of an age of 56.
Released in 1965 on his The Return of Roger Miller LP, "King of the Road" would top the Country charts (as noted above), and reach #4 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is considered by some to be the greatest country song ever written (which is somewhat odd as the song somewhat defies classification), and while I wouldn't necessarily say it was my choice, it certainly deserves consideration.
William Shakespeare famously wrote in Hamlet that brevity is the soul of wit, and in "King of the Road" Roger Miller takes that bit of writing advice to heart. Clocking in at just two minutes and thirty seconds, Miller weaves the tale of a happy hobo and his wanderings with nary a wasted word and just a little whimsy. Even the music is sparse--a bass, an acoustic guitar, and--an FNJ first--some dandy finger snapping. Miller sings with a jaunty swagger that brings his happy hobo to life. Many other songs of this nature end up being little more than novelty songs, but with his finely crafted lyrics and joyous performance, Miller has given us an enduring classic.
Lyric Sheet: "I know every engineer on every train/All the children and all of their names/Every handout in every town/And every lock that ain't locked when no one's around..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee
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