It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “King of the Road” by Roger Miller
April 14, 1965
“King of the Road” by Roger Miller
#1 on the Billboard Middle-Road Singles chart, February 13 – April 23, 1965
#1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, March 27 – April 30, 1965
“Trailer for sale or rent / rooms to let, 50 cents.” The opening lines of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” are some of the most memorable in all of popular music, humorously evoking the transitory, unglamorous existence of an easygoing vagabond. The record became one of biggest country crossover hits of the ’60s, topping the Billboard country chart for five weeks, its adult contemporary chart for 10 weeks, and peaking at #4 on the Hot 100, while also reaching #1 in the UK and Norway. “King of the Road” has maintained its ubiquity over the decades, and is still frequently played on the radio and featured in commercials, movies, and the culture at large. It’s arguably the best-known song this column has ever discussed, even if the man who wrote and performed it remains relatively obscure.
Texas native Roger Miller grew up picking cotton at his aunt and uncle’s farm in Erick, Oklahoma. His brother-in-law Sheb Wooley, who would later gain fame as an actor and the writer/singer of the novelty song “The Purple People Eater,” gave the young Roger a fiddle and taught him to play guitar. Miller’s first attempt at breaking out as a recording artist stalled in the ’50s, but he became a fixture around Nashville, backing musicians like Minnie Pearl, Ray Price, and Faron Young, and writing hits for Price (“Invitation to the Blues”), Young (“That’s the Way I Feel”), Jim Reeves (“Billy Bayou” and “Home”), and Ernest Tubb (“Half a Mind”). All the while, Miller drifted in and out of the music business, at one time leaving Music City altogether for a short-lived stint as a firefighter. Legendary Nashville producer Chet Atkins eventually got Miller signed to RCA, where he earned a couple of country hits — “You Don’t Want My Love,” “When Two Worlds Collide” — but was dropped from the label by 1963.
In 1964, the year that the British Invasion kicked most American music to the curb, Miller unexpectedly scored his big breakthrough. He signed with Smash Records (home to Jerry Lee Lewis and James Brown) and released the single “Dang Me,” where his offbeat sense of humor and love of wordplay shone through. (“Roses are red, violets are purple / sugar’s sweet and so is maple surple.”) Miller came up through Nashville, but he shared little with the smooth, urbane Nashville Sound defined by Jim Reeves; despite Miller’s origins in ‘50s honky-tonk, he didn’t have much in common with the Bakersfield Sound of Buck Owens, either. The Miller sound showcased by “Dang Me” is instead a one-of-a-kind blend of country, pop, jazz, and novelty song, highlighted by Miller’s conversational singing style and his half-picked, half-sung guitar solo.
“Dang Me” became Miller’s first country #1 and first pop hit, eventually hitting #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helping him win five Grammys at the 1964 awards. His next two singles, “Chug-a-Lug” and “Do-Wacka-Do,” also became both pop and country hits, and cemented Miller’s inimitable style. It was the third follow-up to “Dang Me,” however, that truly catapulted Miller into pop culture history.
“King of the Road” opens with a minimalist, ear-grabbing arrangement: simple fingersnaps, joined later by a faint bassline and Miller’s jazzy phrasing. Its lyrics both romanticize a vagrant’s freedom and poke fun at the shortcomings of having no money, like sleeping in unlocked warehouses and smoking discarded cigar butts. Miller packs the song with memorable turns of phrase (“I’m a man of means by no means”) and crafts a melody that sidles up to the listener and ingratiates itself without wearing out its welcome. While the song is clearly humorous, however, “King of the Road” never comes across as mean-spirited or reductive — Miller seems to understand the vagabond impulse, and indeed lived his life seemingly on the verge of succumbing to it himself.
The record won Miller a further five Grammys at the 1965 ceremony, plus a sixth for its parent album, The Return of Roger Miller. For a while, Miller was the most celebrated man in country music, crafting hits on both the pop and country charts, and balancing relatively straightforward songs like “Engine Engine #9” and “Husbands and Wives” with weirder, memorably titled numbers like “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” and “My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died.” Although he typically wrote his own material, he became the first artist to record (and make hits out of) Bobby Russell’s “Little Green Apples” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee“; the latter, with its portrayal of restless travelers and refrain of “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” offers a darker spin on the theme of his signature song.
Miller’s hits mostly dried up by the end of the ’60s, but he continued to pop up every now and then, writing and performing songs for Disney’s Robin Hood in the ’70s, and winning a Tony Award in the ’80s for his score for the Huck Finn musical Big River. Miller died in 1992, but his biggest hit remains as vital as ever. “King of the Road” persists as the theme song for anyone who has dropped out of society to strike out on the open road — or at least fantasized that they could.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
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