The Weird, Brilliant Mind Of Roger Miller

 

Some guys are smart, some guys are clever, some guys are completely alien. Roger Miller, I think, was an alien. 

I first became aware of Roger Miller in (I think) 1964. You couldn't miss him. From '64 to '66 there was no one hotter in country music. 1964 was a time when radio stations weren't segregated by genre. We heard a little bit of everything -- The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Dean Martin, J. Frank Wilson (bet you forgot!), Manfred Mann, Al Hirt, Roy Orbison, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Vinton (!?) and Roger Miller.

In 1964 and 1965 alone, Roger Miller had Dang Me, Chug-A-Lug, Do-Wacka-Do, England Swings, Engine Engine #9, and of course, King Of The Road. You couldn't miss him. I was nine years old in 1964 and (just like now) I liked songs for their melody, not necessarily their lyrics, but Miller's words were so foreign, that even though I didn't actually understand their meaning, his songs were impossible to ignore. Part of the genius of Roger Miller's songwriting was the accessibility of his songs. Even a nine-year-old girl could sing along. He was an expert at unexpected rhymes. I knew even then that most songs were pap and only their melodies and production saved them, and I'm not excusing The Beatles here, either. I wasn't exactly jaded, but I could pick out originality. Miller's songs were unlike any other. I do believe, however, that as silly as some of those tunes were, they all had a grain of Roger Miller truth (maybe not You Can't Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd). 

But let's start at the beginning.

He was a bellhop at the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville before signing on with Minnie Pearl's band as a fiddler, although he didn't know how to play the fiddle. Eventually he joined Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys and wrote this hit for Price, which he sings harmony on below:

 

In fact, Roger Miller wrote tons of songs for tons of artists, from Ernest Tubb to Faron Young to Jim Reeves.

"Roger was the most talented, and least disciplined, person that you could imagine", citing the attempts of Miller's Tree Publishing boss, Buddy Killen to force him to finish a piece. He was known to give away lines, inciting many Nashville songwriters to follow him around since, according to Killen, "everything he said was a potential song." (source)

It's impossible to list all the songs Miller wrote, or the swarms of artists who recorded them. He eventually went on tour as Faron Young's drummer, though he was as much of a drummer as he was a fiddler, before at last landing a recording contract with Smash Records.

And then he exploded.

One couldn't turn on network television without seeing Roger Miller. He appeared on everything from The Tonight Show to Shindig.  

(I like how Dick Clark calls him a "humorist" - I don't think Dick actually got it.)

 

This was self-loathing at its finest:

Well, here I sit high, gettin' ideas
Ain't nothin' but a fool would live like this
Out all night and runnin' wild
Woman's sittin' home with a month old child

Dang me, dang me
They oughta take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman would you weep for me?

Just sittin' 'round drinkin' with the rest of the guys
Six rounds bought and I bought five
I spent the groceries and a half the rent
I lack fourteen dollars havin' twenty seven cents

Dang me, dang me
They ought-a take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman would you weep for me?

They say roses are red and violets are purple
And sugar's sweet and so is maple syrple
Well I'm seventh out of seven sons
My pappy was a pistol, I'm a son of a gun

I said dang me, dang me
They ought-a take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman would you weep for me?

(Don't feel bad, Dick. I didn't get it until recently, either.)

My favorite Roger Miller tune remains the same fifty-seven years after its release. At age nine, as opposed to age thirty-nine, I didn't internalize the heartache in this song. Maybe the brilliant rhyming obscured my emotional cognizance. Or maybe I was nine.

 

Naturally, this song was everywhere, and established Roger Miller's bona fides:

But long after Roger passed away, artists kept recording his songs:

(Okay, that's gotta be the actual, real, original Roger Miller in this video.)

Roger Miller was probably the most prolific, most original songwriter Nashville has ever, or will ever see. 

That only happens once in a century. 

It deserves to be remembered.

 

Retro Album Review - Easy Come, Easy Go - George Strait

 

I would review new albums, but better sites than mine specialize in it, and frankly, I've tried listening to the reviewers' track recommendations and have found the samples so-so at best. My album reviews, therefore, focus on older releases that a casual country fan may have missed. 

I mentioned in the past that I own twenty-three George Strait albums (plus a boxed set). No, I'm not a fanatic. I own many, many, many CD's, not to mention LP's and those little round 45-RPM discs.
 

(These are just the CD's, and the rows are two-deep.)

 

It's no secret that George Strait is my favorite country artist. There's a reason they call him King George. That doesn't mean all twenty-three of my Strait CD's are shiny. At a certain point in time, I made it my goal to buy every one of his releases, just to say I owned them all, but as time went on my dedication flagged. And frankly, I simply stopped buying CD's all together. 

 

Unlike most every classic country fan, I'm not a huge fan of Strait's early work. It's not bad; it's just not standout. Oh sure, for its time it gleamed, but that was all relative. Country in those days was going through an identity crisis. If you've read my previous posts, you know that I abandoned country in the late seventies, and I had no clue who George Strait even was until my non-musical mother introduced me to him. My husband, who is definitely not a country fan, bought George's greatest hits -- Volume 1 -- just to prove to me his open-mindedness, but he stumbled in his selection. I certainly don't hate the songs; they just don't evince any heart-tugging emotion. 

 

It wasn't until the nineties that George hit his stride. I suspect he asserted more control over his career as it skyrocketed and didn't reflexively kow-tow to his producer's whims. (Tony Brown is a damn fine producer, but an artist's output should be a collaborative effort.)

 

Weird thing about George: he is a sucker for that easy-listening, smooth definitely non-country stuff, and he's demonstrated that in recent years. But maybe he's just torn. I like sixties and eighties pop/rock even though my heart belongs to country. And if one's been at the pinnacle of his industry for forty years, he's allowed to record whatever the heck he wants. 

 

I'm happy to report, however, that Easy Come Easy Go is a country album. And what an album it is!

 

Songwriter Jim Lauderdale is kind of a goofy, odd guy, but he is one of the best songwriters in country, and he has three tracks on this album -- three of the best tracks, by the way. Lauderdale-penned songs have been very good to George Strait. 

 

I actually remember bringing this CD home, slipping it into my CD changer and being bowled over by the very first (Lauderdale) track, Stay Out Of My Arms. (solid A)

 

 

Track #2, Just Look At Me, written by Gerald Smith and Curtis Wayne, is a solid stone country song; perhaps not as memorable as it could be simply because it's dwarfed by the other tracks on the album (B+):

 

Easy Come, Easy Go, penned by new Hall Of Famer Dean Dillon along with Aaron Barker, is a solidly-written song, its reputation enhanced by constant radio play (I think this may have been the first single release from the album) and by superb production. (solid B)

 

#4, I'd Like To Have That One Back (songwriters: Aaron Barker, Bill Shore, and Rick West -- Really? Three people to write a song?) sounds like an outtake from the movie Pure Country. It would have fit well there. It's a decent, albeit generic country song, but perhaps it suffers in comparison to the better album tracks. (going with a B- on this one):

 

 

Love Bug, which by far garnered the most attention of all the tracks on the album was written by the great Wayne Kemp and Curtis Wayne, and was (obviously) a sixties hit for George Jones, although some oblivious fans assumed it was an original George Strait recording. What can I say? It's a great, fun song, which is why Jones scored a hit with it originally. Here's a live performance that features Vince Gill (c'mon, this has gotta be an A):

 

Here comes another Lauderdale song at #6 - I Wasn't Fooling Around. Just perfection. (I love how George sings "A-round".) A+

Without Me Around I'd completely forgotten. This is another Dean Dillon (and John Northrup) tune. Frankly the weakest track on the album. (generous C)

I don't know why, but the title The Man In Love With You rang no bells with me until I just now played the video on YouTube. This is a good song, reminiscent of I Cross My Heart. Written by Steve Dorff and Gary Harju, it's a typical George Strait love song, which the more pensive Strait excels at doing. 

(A-ha! Steve Dorff also wrote I Cross My Heart! Am I good or what?)

 

I like this one, even though I'd somehow forgotten it. (B+)

 

 

That's Where My Baby Feels At Home. Okay, he got me with this one. The song was written by (again) the great Wayne Kemp, along with Curtis Wayne and Faron Young. Again, most novices don't know that this was an early hit for Faron Young, but I know. This is country the way country is supposed to be. (A+++)

The final track on the album proves my point about how much George loves that easy-listening dreck. We Must Be Loving Right, written by Clay Baker and Roger Brown, was also recorded by Barbra Streisand. Need I say more? George tries to country it up with some slide steel, but c'mon. 

 

I do understand why he closed out the album with this one, though. (C minus?)

Anytime one finds an album with mostly A's and B-plusses, that is a once in a lifetime discovery. Easy Come Easy Go could well be my favorite country album ever, though I hesitate to quantify those things. 

What George (and Tony) did so deftly was incorporate the best of ninety's songwriting with choice songs from the past. 

 

And thus rope us in and never let go.

45's

If I started a podcast, I think I would call it, "The Singles". Of course, since it costs $$$$$ to actually play music on a podcast, I guess it would just be me talking about 45's. Not such a great idea, now that I think about it.

In an effort to establish a smidgen of organization, I've been sifting through all my old LP's and 45's. Its funny, but the singles actually resonate with me more than the albums. Country didn't really become album-centric until around the 1980's, unlike rock. There was an occasional standout, like Emmylou Harris's Elite Hotel and Porter and Dolly's duet albums, but the Nashville producers hawked singles. Maybe they figured the rubes couldn't afford a $3.99 LP, but no thought whatsoever went into producing an album. Generally the album would consist of two hits and eight or nine cover songs. We buyers knew what we were getting into, and even at age sixteen, I could, yes, afford a couple of four-dollar LP's every month. Too bad Chet Atkins, Glenn Sutton, et al didn't try harder.

Thus, I bought a ton of singles. Most of them were purchased at Woolworth's, where the most popular tracks were displayed on an end cap. How much could one lose by picking up a single they "kinda liked"? Going through them today, I couldn't even remember some of the songs, but I must have kinda liked them at the time.

Somehow, included with my 45 collection were a bunch of singles my mom had bought. I'm not sure how those got mixed in. I don't remember her gifting them to me. Bless her heart, my mom wasn't a big music buff, but she tried. She handwrote "this side" on all her singles. I suspect she scooped up a sheaf of records on every shopping trip, sight unseen, then played them at home to determine which side was the best.

I, on the other hand, pressed some of my singles to my heart. There's this one:

(I wrote my name on all my records and included the year.)

 

This record traveled many miles with me. If you read my memories of Merle Haggard, you will understand. 

 

Short version: I had a battery-powered record player and when my best friend Alice and I discovered that Merle and his retinue had checked into my parents' motel, we dragged that record player outside, across the driveway from his room, set it up on a little table and whirled this record over and over. In my defense, I was thirteen.

 

Around 1970 I stopped throwing away the record sleeves like a dolt. Thus, the majority of my 45's still rest inside their original wrappings. (No, I'm not selling them on eBay.)

 

Looking through them today, I often knew which record I'd picked up simply by spying the sleeve. Just looking at these records I was transported back to a lovely time. Imagine if I actually played them! I have one of those USB turntable thingies, but I also have a kitten. Trying to spin a record would be an exercise in frustration, hurt feelings (on her part), and scratches gouging my previously-pristine singles.

But I will, someday. The temptation is too great, especially now that I've glimpsed those decades-old wonders.

I've always maintained that music is tied up in memories. When I spied "Ride Me Down Easy" I was immediately transported back to the post-graduation road trip Alice and I took, singing along to the radio at the tops of our lungs to drown out the wind whooshing through the open car windows. 

Some of my '80's singles from my MTV days, the singles with the block sleeves and album cover-like artwork, evoke the giddy days of devouring pop music alongside my pre-teen sons. 

(No, I'm not just a country music geek.)

 

 

Yes, a singles podcast would be something I'd lap up, but somebody else'll need to do it. I'm poor. (And the Prince estate will slap you down if you even try to spin one of his tracks outside the confines of your own home.)

A whole podcast chapter could be solely devoted to one-hit wonders that nobody remembers -- until they hear the record.

Yea, singles. Those are my ticket.

 

 

 

 

The Key's In The Mailbox, Come On In

 

When it came to music, my dad liked what he liked. He wasn't a musical explorer. In the sixties and seventies, Dad could pick from the the offerings of AM radio...and that was it. My dad was a guy whose notion of success was buying a new car every two years. He had graduated from a used Ford Model A in the forties to the subsequent automobile upgrades of Galaxys and ultimately to the boxy casket of a gold Lincoln once his ship came in. My dad's ultimate success symbol was a shiny new car.

His seventies-era Lincoln came equipped with the newest advent in sound -- a built-in eight-track player. He bought approximately three eight-track cartridges -- surprisingly, Ray Stevens and Jerry Reed -- and Tony Booth. Every local destination he drove me to, which consisted of junior high school choral concerts he never hung around for, featured one of the three tapes, which inexplicably managed to stop smack-dab in the middle of a song and he'd have to eject and flip the cartridge over for the song to continue. I was dubious about this new technology, but everyone said it was "the thing", so I played along. It wasn't as if I had any say in the matter. I was a passenger hostage. I don't know how many times I heard Jerry Reed's "Another Puff", and it was humorous the first three hundred times my dad played it, but the sheen wore off by play three hundred and one. Dad was essentially a cheapskate when it came to laying out money that didn't involve cars, so those three eight-track tapes became imprinted on my brain pan. 

Tony Booth was one singer among Buck Owens' new coterie of Capitol artists, which included Susan Raye and Buck's son Buddy, who was an even paler version of the pasty vocal talents of his father. I was a bit suspicious of this new cabal. Buck had been the premiere country artist of the sixties, but then as the decade turned he veered off into his own personal talent agency, plugging his latest finds and using the Buckaroos to cement the gaps in his artists' ability.

Dad also possessed the Capitol Records' orange and red single of this track, which he spun on his console stereo in the living room, and which sounded suspiciously like the phenomenal Don Rich was singing background vocals on (he was).

I was reminded of Tony Booth one afternoon when Willie's Roadhouse spun him. I'm not sure that Tony Booth ever recorded an original song, but Dad liked him a lot. Tony Booth is like one of those luminary bodies that pops up in the sky on a late night when one happens to awake and peers out their bedroom window. By dawn he's gone.

That's not a bad thing, necessarily. It's just the way of the music world. It would take me more than ten fingers to list the artists, many of them extraordinary, who flamed out simply because the musical universe had changed. 

In honor of Dad's three eight-track tapes, here's the Jerry Reed song that eventually brittled my nerves. DISCLOSURE:  Dad was a lifelong smoker, and I guess one could now say I am, too. Maybe that's why it's not really that funny.

In honor of Dad's good taste, and mine, here's Ray Stevens:

 

I don't give a flying F what any of the country sites say to denigrate Ray Stevens. The album Misty is a masterpiece. Anyone who's not an imbecile knows that Ray Stevens is more than "The Streak". 

So, Dad was essentially two for three. I never cared for Jerry Reed, but Tony Booth was (is) pretty good, and Ray Stevens is a treasure.

I wonder if heaven has an eight-track player, or for that matter, a Lincoln town car. If it does, Dad is happily cruising along, a Belair filter-tip balancing in the ash tray.

Music is where you find it. 

Hug onto the good; giggle about the bad.

Charley

I was a newly-minted convert to country music in 1967. Admittedly I had tons of catching up to do, but instead of looking back, I was keen to discover country for myself. Country was uncharted territory for me, and if I was going to embrace it, it had to be on my own terms.

'67 was an odd time to embrace country music. My FM station was in love with Glen Campbell, who wasn't exactly country; but night after night, the disc jockey played Campbell and deep Willie Nelson tracks. Clearly the DJ hated country and was simply trying to make the best of his bad situation until he could move on down the road to something more hip. He exclusively played two albums, rightfully assuming no one was listening anyway. In my tiny tomb of a bedroom the only signal that reached me was the FM channel, and I heard enough of "Me And Paul" to last a lifetime. My country mentor, my friend Alice, patiently steered me away from FM. Country music -- real country -- was exploding on AM radio. A new girl singer named Tammy had a sad track called, "I Don't Wanna Play House"; Connie Smith was singing about Cincinnati, Ohio. A country teenager's swoon, Merle Haggard, had three songs in the top ten. And some new guy who spelled his first name oddly, Charley Pride, was busting the country airwaves. His voice sounded like it belonged to an older guy, yet he was brand new. And he had a killer song:

Alice and I knew nothing about this new artist, except that we liked his songs. The internet was decades away from being invented -- all we had was radio and, to a lesser extent, the three broadcast networks who rarely deigned to showcase country music. When I heard "The Easy Part's Over", I pictured a grizzled cowpoke who'd finally muscled his way onto country radio.

I don't remember who heard it first -- Alice or me -- but one day the local DJ casually mentioned that Charley Pride was a Black artist. What? In country? Had he accidentally stumbled into a Nashville recording studio where George Jones was crooning into the mic in an open-collared shirt and a tumbler of whiskey gripped in his hand, and the producer spied Charley lingering awkwardly and thought, hey, this might be interesting?

No. 

Charley Pride had grown up on country and it had seeped inside his bones. He'd listened to the Opry on Saturday nights on his crank-up radio in Sledge, Mississippi, and he was in love with it. And he sang the way he sang.

 

Rain drippin' off the brim of my hat

Sure feels cold today

 

Chet Atkins, creator of the notorious "Nashville Sound", produced Charley's first singles. "Just Between You And Me" was the first one that charted, and it was not only a great song but a great track. Atkins managed to tone down his beloved strings and background singers and emphasize the elements that made a country single "country". Alice and I liked great recordings; we had no checklist of required artist attributes. I was partial to the Bakersfield Sound, but I could get on board with Hillbilly, too. 

One of the first two LP's I bought as a twelve-year-old was this one:

(I still have it, by the way.)

I was just sifting through my dusty record albums the other day and I discovered that I bought a lot of Charley Pride's albums -- seven, in fact. It's impossible to underestimate the impact he had on country music in the late sixties/early seventies. There was a handful of country superstars -- Merle, possibly George Jones, Loretta Lynn -- and then there was the second tier. Charley was a superstar.

 

I've written before about the momentous event in my young life when Merle Haggard and his retinue checked into my parents' motel. Alice and I had long before purchased tickets for his live show, but to actually see the man in the flesh (walking his dog!) was earth-shattering. One of the opening acts that night just happened to be Charley Pride. Alice and I already had the inside scoop, but most of the audience was taken aback when a Black man appeared on stage. He made a couple of jokes about having a "permanent tan" and "probably not what you expected", but the fans lapped up his performance and his joy.

 

And, yes, I got his autograph (still have that, too).

 

 

By the mid-seventies Charley's star had begun to fade. Unless you're George Strait, your country shelf life is about ten years, if you're lucky. Charley had taken to recording covers of recent pop hits and I was slowly abandoning country. So he and I finally parted ways.

Oh, did I forget? I didn't, actually, but this was not one of my favorite Pride tracks, even though it was by far the recording that shot him into the stratosphere:

 

In retrospect and sentimentality, I kind of begrudgingly like it now.

Don't ever (ever!) forget the impact Charley Pride had on country music. He was a glowing orb that other artists of his time only wished they could be. 

Charley lived a long and happy life and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000 (Really? It took that long?)

Charley Pride passed away on December 12, 2020 at the age of 86 from complications of COVID-19 (Thanks, China) shortly after he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the CMA's. A big chunk of my childhood went along with him.

 

Thank you, Charley. Alice and I loved your music.

 

 

 

 

 

My Sister

 

(Carole, back row, third from left)

 

My parents were excellent Catholics. They didn't stop having kids until God told them it was time to stop having kids. Thus my sister Carole was eleven years older than me and her firstborn son was only a year younger than my baby sister. Mom and Carole were raising babies together -- that's how it worked. Mom was a grandma at age 38. 

Carole got married and moved out of the house while I was still a gap-toothed adolescent. She and her new husband rented an apartment in our tiny town, a couple of blocks away from my elementary school. Sometimes I'd chill at their flat after school. My brother-in-law was attending school after work to enrich his job opportunities. I don't recall what he was studying, but I remember seeing his leather-bound books on their apartment shelf and being mightily impressed. Carole and I would listen to AM radio while she scurried to get dinner ready. Carole's place was comfortable and homey.

Being the oldest child, she bestowed upon me my nickname shortly after I arrived home from the hospital. Thenceforth I was Shelly and only used my formal name for school (because it was required). 

When our mom set forth on her short-lived restaurant venture, taking me with her, she left my little brother and sister in Carole's care while our dad worked the fields. Carole had two kids of her own by then, but what were two more?

Carole was full of ideas, not all of them necessarily good, but she approached each one with gusto. She approached life with gusto -- wide-eyed, ready for the next adventure. She was by far the most optimistic person in our family and the most jovial. Nothing seemed to get her down and she was always quick to laugh. I think she got that trait from our dad, who was naturally happy-go-lucky, although he had his demons, too. I marvel that either Carole didn't let things get to her or she was the world's greatest actress. She also wasn't a scold -- if someone in the family did something everyone else frowned upon, she just shrugged it off. Life was too much fun for negativity. 

Dad, Mom, my youngest siblings and I traveled to Fort Worth for a visit and Carole lamented that she missed spending time with the family. We commenced the two-day drive home and pulled into the driveway only to spy a car with Texas plates pull in behind us. Carole and her family had decided to pull up stakes and move, just like that. (Her husband was a notoriously fast driver, so they probably had a little time to pack their belongings.) I'm certain it was her idea and she had made it sound like so much fun, every member of her family thought, heck yea!

That was Carole. Whereas my second oldest sister and I were cautious and my big brother was calculating, Carole could talk all of us into abandoning our inhibitions and darting off on a new quest. And it was fun. I don't think I ever laughed as much in my life as when I was around her.

My sister died today. She was seventy-six. Her four sons were with her. Life wasn't especially easy for her after her divorce. She worked long past the time she should have been home enjoying her grandchildren. I bet she never complained, though, and simply thought of it as another of life's adventures.

Bye, Carole. Please share a laugh with Mom and Dad when you see them.

About Those Disappearing Music Videos...

 

 

I rarely go back and re-read my old blog posts. What's the point, really? I was there when they were written. Today, however, I wanted to recall something I'd blogged about, so I started scanning my posts. Since this blog is primarily about music, I include tons of YouTube videos. Well, looky here -- a bunch of the videos I posted no longer exist!

It's impossible for me to re-add videos to hundreds of past posts. I tried for a while, but the task became too unmanageable. So if you come across something I've posted and you think, wow, this person is a complete moron, well....at least with regard to non-existent music videos, they really did exist when I posted them.

So, feel free to hum a tune to replace the bare spots.