Roger Miller

Roger Dean Miller Sr., born January 2, 1936, in Fort Worth, Texas, was an American singer-songwriter and Broadway composer whose work spanned country music, novelty recordings, film, and musical theater. He died on October 25, 1992, from lung cancer.

Miller's father, Jean Miller, died from spinal meningitis when Miller was approximately one year old. Unable to support her three sons during the Great Depression, his mother Laudene sent each boy to live with one of Jean's brothers. Miller was raised on a farm outside Erick, Oklahoma, by Elmer and Armelia Miller. His childhood involved farm labor such as picking cotton and plowing, and he received his early education at a one-room schoolhouse. As late as 1951, the family had no telephone. His cousin's husband, Sheb Wooley, introduced Miller to the guitar and bought him a fiddle; Wooley, Hank Williams, and Bob Wills were the primary influences behind Miller's ambition to become a singer-songwriter. At seventeen, Miller stole a guitar, turned himself in the following day, and chose to enlist in the U.S. Army rather than face jail. While stationed in Atlanta, Georgia, near the end of his service, he played fiddle in the Circle A Wranglers, a military musical group founded by Faron Young. An army sergeant whose brother was Kenneth C. "Jethro" Burns of the duo Homer and Jethro encouraged Miller to travel to Nashville after his discharge.

Arriving in Nashville, Miller met Chet Atkins, who lent him a guitar for an audition. Out of nerves, Miller played and sang in two different keys simultaneously, and Atkins advised him to return with more experience. Miller took work as a bellhop at the Andrew Jackson Hotel, earning the nickname "the singing bellhop," before being hired by Minnie Pearl to play fiddle in her band. Through George Jones, he was introduced to executives at Starday Records, who arranged a recording session in Houston. Miller and Jones co-wrote "Tall, Tall Trees" and "Happy Child" during that period. After marrying and becoming a father, Miller temporarily left music to work as a fireman in Amarillo, Texas, performing at night. He later joined Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys and wrote "Invitation to the Blues," which Price recorded as a number-three country hit. Signing with Tree Publishing at fifty dollars a week, Miller wrote "Half a Mind" for Ernest Tubb, "That's the Way I Feel" for Faron Young, and "Billy Bayou" and "Home," both recorded by Jim Reeves, with "Billy Bayou" reaching number one.

Miller signed with Decca Records in 1958, where he was paired with singer Donny Lytle — later known as Johnny Paycheck — to record "A Man Like Me" and "The Wrong Kind of Girl," neither of which charted. He subsequently signed with RCA Victor through Chet Atkins and recorded "You Don't Want My Love" in 1960, which peaked at number fourteen on country charts and marked his first chart appearance. The following year, "When Two Worlds Collide," co-written with Bill Anderson, broke into the country top ten. After a period of personal and professional instability, Miller signed with Smash Records in exchange for $1,600 cash and sixteen recorded sides. His first Smash session in early 1964 produced "Dang Me" and "Chug-a-Lug," which reached numbers one and three on country charts respectively and performed strongly on the Billboard Hot 100. Later that year, he recorded "King of the Road," which topped both country and Adult Contemporary charts, reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100, and hit number one on the UK Singles Chart for one week in May 1965. The song was certified gold in May 1965 after selling one million copies and earned Miller a royalty check of $160,000 that summer. It was inspired by a sign in Chicago reading "Trailers for Sale or Rent" and an encounter with a hobo at an airport in Boise, though Miller spent months completing the song despite writing "Dang Me" in four minutes.

In 1973, Miller wrote and performed several songs for the Disney animated film Robin Hood. His Broadway career spanned two distinct periods. Earlier in his life, he appeared on Broadway between 1944 and 1953, with credits including the musical Jackpot and John Brown's Body. Later, he wrote the music and lyrics for Big River, the 1985 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, and played the role of Pap Finn in the production in 1986. In 1982, Miller charted his final top-twenty country hit, "Old Friends," recorded with Ray Price and Willie Nelson. Covers of his compositions continued to reach the top of country charts into the 1990s, with Alan Jackson's recording of "Tall, Tall Trees" and Brooks and Dunn's version of "Husbands and Wives" both hitting number one.

Miller was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995, three years after his death, and into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2005. The Roger Miller Museum, located in his hometown of Erick, Oklahoma, operated as a tribute to him before eventually closing.