Roger Miller’s son is getting candid about why his famous father joined the Army as a teenager.
During a recent interview on the “Drifting Cowboy” podcast, the country music legend’s son, Dean Miller, discussed how his father grew up “on a farm with no electricity” and would spend the weekends driving to Amarillo, Texas to play shows at a nightclub in an effort to break into the music industry.
“He would play at this one club, and he was friends with the guy and my dad, as he describes it, was ignorant and didn’t know how to break into show business or how to get out of town or what to do with his life,” he said.
Dean explained that his dad later had the idea that “if he stole a bunch of stuff from this club, he’d have all he needed to be in show business,” leading him to steal equipment and costumes. According to the singer’s website, he stole a guitar because he wanted it “so desperately to write songs,” and turned himself in the next day.
“The police caught him and the guy that he stole from wrote a letter to the judge and said, ‘Please be lenient on this kid. He doesn’t know any better. He’s a good kid.”‘ And all this stuff,” Dean said. “And so they told my dad, ‘You can go to jail or you can go in the Army. Your choice.’ And he chose the Army.”
After joining the Army, Roger was deployed to Korea during the Korean War, which he referred to as the “Korea Clash of ’52.”
Dean recalled his father telling him that while in Korea, “I just spent the whole time hiding under a jeep and crying.”
Ultimately, his time in the Army helped him in his music career, with Dean saying that is where “he met people in music” and was able to get “recommendations to people back home and started coming to Nashville after that.”
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It was while he was in the Army that he met his longtime friend and writing partner, Bill Anderson. The two would go on to write many hit songs together, including “When Two Worlds Collide,” which became a Top 10 hit.
Roger is often regarded as a major figure in country music, credited for broadening the range of the genre by including elements of pop music in his songs.
Between 1965 and 1966, Roger won 11 Grammy Awards, including best contemporary country album for “Dang Me/Chug-A-Lug,” and best country song for “Dang Me” and “King of the Road.” He received a total of 18 nominations.
Throughout his career, he also wrote the score for the Broadway musical, “Big River,” and the soundtrack for the Disney movie, “Robin Hood.” He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995, three years after his death.
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“Look at Buck Owens or Roger Miller; they’re both icons in my eyes,” Kacey Musgraves told The Boot in 2018. “Roger Miller was known for his humor, but there was a lot of deep water under those songs, and a lot of meat on those bones. Look at all the places he went: From Broadway to Disney. To me, if you look beyond the box, the whole world is waiting — no matter what you call the music, just be true to what you’re doing.”
The country music icon died in October 1992 at the age of 56 following a battle with lung cancer.
