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Clip of the day, September 24th, 2008 - Roger Miller - King of the Road

No not the veteran Cameroons footballer - country star Roger Miller performing his biggest hit from 1965.

Roger Dean Miller (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer, songwriter and musician, best known for his mid-1960s country/pop hits such as King of the Road, Dang Me and England Swings. He also wrote the music and lyrics for the Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River (1985).

In the 1970s, Miller appeared in ads for Monroe shock absorbers, backed by a re-recording of "King of the Road".

Miller wrote and performed three songs in the 1973 animated Robin Hood film as the rooster/minstrel Alan-a-Dale. One of these, a high-pitched sample of "Whistle Stop", was later used as the musical accompaniment for the Internet phenomenon "Hampsterdance".

Miller was married to Mary Arnold, who herself was a musician, a member of Kenny Rogers' backing band, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. Band leader Kenny Rogers introduced the two. Arnold now manages Miller's estate.

His eldest son, Dean Miller, is a singer-songwriter in his own right. Roger's Christmas song, "Old Toy Trains" was written about his son, who was only two years old when the song came out in 1967.

Miller provided the voice of Speiltoe, the equine narrator of the Rankin/Bass holiday special Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977).

A lifelong cigarette smoker, Miller died of lung and throat cancer in 1992. In a TV interview, he once explained that he composed his songs from "bits and pieces" of ideas he wrote on scraps of paper. When asked what he did with the unused bits and pieces, he half-joked, "I smoke 'em!" One of his songs, "A Man Can't Quit", centered on the subject of addiction to cigarettes.

 

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Date :25 September 2008
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