Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Road ends for Miller, the 1960s' country king Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 13:27:07 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \HD Road ends for Miller, the 1960s' country king \BY Octavio Roca \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES The King of the Road is dead. Roger Miller, the boy from Oklahoma who rose to stardom in pop and country music in the 1960s, died of cancer Sunday morning just hours after being admitted to Century City Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 56. The singer and songwriter, best-loved for such hits as "Dang Me," "England Swings" and "King of the Road," announced early this year that he was receiving radiation treatments for a cancerous tumor on his vocal cords. "The challenge is to stay on the train," Mr. Miller told The Washington Times last year before a well-received local appearance. "You get on this train young and you ride, and I guess you work your way up to conductor. It's just trying to write tickets to keep yourself on the ride. "I don't feel like I'm falling off, but I have to upgrade my ticket a little." Roger Miller was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His father died when the boy was barely a year old, and his mother sent him to live with an aunt and uncle in Erick, Okla. Mr. Miller wrote his first song when he was 5. By age 12, he had taught himself to play a fiddle given to him by his brother-in-law, Sheb Wooley (who wrote and sang the 1958 hit "Purple People Eater"). He later picked up guitar and drums and dropped out of high school to play in honky-tonks and bars. At 18, he started a three-year hitch in the Army, including a year and a half in post-armistice Korea. A year younger than Elvis Presley and struck by a burning desire to "be just like Hank Williams," Mr. Miller arrived in Nashville in 1957. He got his first job playing fiddle for Minnie Pearl and later backed up country stars Faron Young, George Jones and Ray Price. In six years of writing songs, he recalled recently, he eventually hit upon a natural, humorous style of "skipping lightly over the light fantastic." He wrote songs for such stars as Mr. Jones, Ernest Tubb, Andy Williams and Patti Page. On his own, the 1964 release of the humorous "Dang Me" catapulted him to stardom. "King of the Road" ensured his popularity beyond the country charts, crossing over to be named best rock single. In 1964 and 1965 alone, he won a total of 11 Grammy Awards. A string of fast-talking, down-home tunes followed, including many now considered country music classics. Among his other hits were "Chug-a-Lug," "Little Green Apples," "Walking in the Sunshine," "Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd," "Do-Whacka-Do," "Engine, Engine No. 9," and "Husbands and Wives." Although his 1966 NBC variety series, "The Roger Miller Show," was a considerable popular success, drug and alcohol abuse precipitated the decline of Mr. Miller's career. Almost 20 years later, in what many considered a spectacular personal and artistic comeback, he conquered Broadway in 1985 with the musical "Big River," his first try at composing for the stage. "I always thought that Roger was the finest song lyricist in America," said veteran Broadway producer Rocco Landesman, who chose him to adapt Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The musical went on to win seven Tony Awards, ran for more than two years on Broadway and enjoyed a long national tour that included a stop at Washington's Kennedy Center. In the late 1980s, Mr. Miller performed with symphony orchestras throughout the country and in supper clubs and concert halls. He later slowed down, spending most of his time with his family in a ranch near Santa Fe, N.M. Still, he kept at his music. "It's like a sewer line [that] backs up if a writer doesn't write," he explained to The Washington Times last year. "I have to stir my hungers every once in a while." Mr. Miller is survived by his third wife, Mary, a former singer, and seven children. This article is based in part on wire service reports. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM