Roger miller cracked#
He became the songwriter’s songwriter, the lyricist who cracked the conundrum of what to rhyme with “orange” (“door hinge,” but of course!) and who’d win Tonys by setting Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to music for the Broadway musical Big River-surely, the country boy who wrote “King of the Road” could relate to that Missouri scamp who rode the Mississippi atop a raft in American literature’s greatest odyssey.īy the time he was 28, Roger’s novelty songs, full of good ol’ boy wisecracking wit and sounds, had earned six Grammys-and that was before his big hit. Co-written by Miller’s third (and final) wife, Mary Arnold Miller, Road’s book reveals Roger’s trials and tribulations growing up, like Woody Guthrie before him, dirt poor in Oklahoma, where he was “abandoned” by his mother and attended a one-room schoolhouse with American Indian classmates.īy sheer dint of his talent and determination Miller escaped from rural Oklahoma and made something of himself. King of the Road: The Roger Miller Story tells the behind-the-scenes saga of the real life singer/songwriter, who wasn’t anywhere near so carefree as the eponymous gallivanter in his most famous number. In fact, I grew into quite the world traveler, if not exactly a denizen of boxcars, like the chartbuster’s broom pushin’, train hoppin’ vagabond. When I was a little boy, like millions of my fellow Americans, I fell in love with Roger Miller’s 1965 song “King of the Road.” This hobo ode, paying homage to the open road and a freewheeling lifestyle unrestrained by responsibilities, became one of my favorite hits. LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.-It’s always sad to learn when the joy that a famous figure you’ve idolized has given you-like comedian John Belushi, for example-eludes them. Jesse Johnson and Trevor Wheetman / Ed Krieger
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