- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Nobody, simply nobody has created records like Roger Miller, who was as popular with teenagers like me as he was with country music fans.
Roger Miller – Golden Hits (1965): Unique is a big word, and I won’t go quite that far in describing Roger Miller. After all, story songs have always been a big part of country music; although they are usually of the cheating-husband, she-done-me-wrong, drank-too-much variety. But to this day, nobody, simply nobody has created records like Roger Miller, who was as popular with teenagers like me as he was with country music fans, even though his songs could hardly be more different from Motown and the British Invasion. Even when the subject is layabouts, like his first hit song “Dang Me”, or drinking, as with one of his cleverest numbers “Chug-a-Lug”, Roger Miller’s story songs are sunny, not to mention funny, and they are dressed up like novelty songs.
Still, from “King of the Road”, to “Engine, Engine #9”, to “Kansas City Star” (also the name of their local newspaper, Kansas City Star, by the way), Roger Miller’s songs have heart and real depth. There is more even to “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” than you might expect, based on the title. Golden Hits also includes a sad song that is still not a weepie, “One Dyin’ and a Buryin’ ”. And if there was ever any doubt about his being a topnotch songwriter, that ended when Roger Miller wrote the songs for a 1985 Broadway musical based on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn called Big River that won seven Tony Awards and ran for 1,000 performances. When he began to be attracted to music, Roger Miller was fortunate to be under the tutelage of his brother-in-law Sheb Wooley, who is known for a string of novelty hits that include “The Purple People Eater” and (under the name Ben Colder) the country satire “Almost Persuaded No. 2”. After several failed singles, Roger Miller settled in as a successful Nashville songwriter but eventually wanted to revive his recording career. Roger Miller then moved to Hollywood and began appearing on top variety shows like The Merv Griffin Show and The Jimmy Dean Show with a decidedly new direction in his music and a goofy personality to match. Roger Miller’s peak year was 1965: All six singles that he released that year were Top Ten pop hits. Roger Miller continued to record, but hits were scarcer in later years. Golden Hits contains most of the essential Roger Miller classics.