Soon after Jim Reeves hit number one with Miller’s Billy Bayou, and Ernest Tubb, Faron Young and George Jones all successfully recorded his songs. He was signed as a songwriter for Tree Music Publishing and Ray Price had a 1958 hit with Invitation To The Blues. He spent a year as a bellhop at a Nashville hotel and began to get some of his songs recorded. When he completed his hitch in the military, Roger moved to Nashville in the mid-1950s and began the slow and painful process of learning the craft and business of writing songs. He spent three years in the US army in Korea. Soon, he was able to play not only guitar and fiddle, but also piano, banjo, and drums. Throughout his adolesence, he played music in addition to working the ranch. Influenced by the singing of Hank Williams as well as his brother-in-law, Sheb Wooley, by the time he was ten, he had earned enough money picking cotton to buy himself a guitar. Though born in Fort Worth, Texas on January 2, 1936, shortly after his father died, when he was still a toddler, he was sent to relatives by his ailing mother and was raised by an aunt and uncle in the small farming community of Erick, Oklahoma. Though he had written scores of these sad-tinged country ballads, he rapidly became known to the public as a wacky guy with a guitar who sang funny songs and made weird noises. These included such classics as Billy Bayou, Big Harlan Taylor, Half A Mind, Swiss Maid and Invitation To The Blues. Something of a prolific songwriter, Miller had written more than 150 songs for such singers as George Jones, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb and Jim Reeves before he made a breakthrough as a singer in his own right. Incredibly that was only a warm-up for what he would do the following year, when he swept the board with another six awards, including Best Rock-and-Roll Male Vocal Performance. In 1964 Miller dominated the country music category in the Grammy Awards, walking off with five awards including Best Country Song and Best Country and Western Male Vocal Performance. In the mid 1960s, while most of America was getting caught up in rock’s British invasion, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter was dominating the pop and country charts with Dang Me, Chug-A-Lug, (And You Had A) Do-Wacka-Do, Engine Engine No.9, One Dyin’ And A Buryin’, Kansas City Star, England Swings, Husbands And Wives, Walkin’ In The Sunshine and Little Green Apples. The song has since been covered by nearly 300 artists in all styles of music from jazz through reggae to soul, country and rock. Miller wrote the jazz-influenced tune in 1964, and when released as a single in March 1965, it sold over 500,000 copies in its first two weeks and subsequently chalked up world wide sales in excess of five million. Its appeal, like all classic songs, is cross generational. The Roger Miller Museum in his home town of Erick, Oklahoma, is a tribute to Miller.Roger Miller’s King Of The Road, is one of the few songs that transcend the boundaries of time and culture. His songs continued to be recorded by younger artists, with covers of "Tall, Tall Trees" by Alan Jackson and "Husbands and Wives" by Brooks & Dunn, each reaching the number one spot on country charts in the 1990s. Later in his life, he wrote the music and lyrics for the 1985 Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River, in which he acted.Miller died from lung cancer in 1992, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later. He also wrote and performed several of the songs for the 1973 Disney animated film Robin Hood. He later began a recording career and reached the peak of his fame in the mid-1960s, continuing to record and tour into the 1990s, charting his final top 20 country hit "Old Friends" with Willie Nelson in 1982. His most recognized tunes included the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me", and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville sound era.After growing up in Oklahoma and serving in the United States Army, Miller began his musical career as a songwriter in the late 1950s, penning such hits as "Billy Bayou" and "Home" for Jim Reeves and "Invitation to the Blues" for Ray Price. (Janu– October 25, 1992) was an American singer-songwriter, musician, and actor, best known for his honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs.
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