Beckham County Oklahoma Biographies

Beckham County, Oklahoma Biographies

Songwriter, singer, guitarist, fiddler, drummer, TV star, humorist, honky-tonk man, Broadway composer, and perhaps above all else, an awesome wit- Roger Miller was all of these and more. Roger Dean Miller was born January 2, 1936, in Fort Worth, Texas, the youngest of three boys. His father, Jean Miller, died at the age of 26 from spinal meningitis. Roger was only a year old. It was during the depression and Roger's mother, Laudene Holt Miller, was in her early 20's. She was just not able to provide for the boys. So each of Jean's three brothers came and took one of the boys to live with them. Roger moved in with Armelia and Elmer Miller on a farm outside Erick, Oklahoma. Roger later joked, "It was so dull you could watch the colors run," and, "the town was so small the town drunk had to take turns." Roger had a difficult childhood. Most days were spent in the cotton fields picking cotton or working the land. He never really accepted the separation of his family. He was lonely and unhappy, but his mind took him to places he could only dream about. Initially, he was attracted to music by hearing country over the radio as well as by his brother-in-law, Sheb Wooley. By the time he was ten, he earned enough money picking cotton to buy himself a guitar. At the age of 11, Wooley gave him a fiddle and encouraged him to pursue a performing career. Miller completed the eighth grade and left school to become a ranch hand and rodeo rider. Throughout his adolescence, he played music in addition to working the ranch. Soon, he was able to play not only guitar and fiddle, but also piano, banjo, and drums. He enlisted in the Army during the Korean war in 1952 and was stationed in South Carolina, where he met the brother of Jethro Burns who arranged an audition at RCA Nashville for him. Early in 1957, Miller left the army and auditioned for Chet Atkins at RCA. The session was unsuccessful, and he spent a year as a bellhop at a Nashville hotel. While in Nashville, Miller met George Jones and Pappy Dailey, who introduced him to Don Pierce, an executive at Mercury Records. Pierce signed Miller and had him cut three songs. His first single, "Poor Little John," disappeared without a trace. Following the failure of his first single, Miller continued to work at the hotel and tour with other musicians -- he played fiddle with Minnie Pearl for a short time, then he became the drummer for Faron Young. After a few months, he was signed as a songwriter for Tree Music Publishing and stopped performing as a supporting musician. Instead of playing music, he became a fireman in Amarillo, TX. The abandonment of performing was short-lived, however -- within a few months, he became the drummer for Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys. In 1958, Price recorded Miller's "Invitation to the Blues," and it went to number three. It was soon followed by three other successful versions of his songs -- Young's "That's the Way I Feel" and Ernest Tubb's "Half a Mind" both went Top Ten, while Jim Reeves had a number one hit with "Billy Bayou." That same year, Jones recorded "Tall Tall Trees" and "Nothing Can Stop My Love," which he had written with Miller; neither of the songs were hits. The following year, Reeves had a hit with another one of Miller's songs, "Home." Since his songwriting career was flourishing, Miller decided it was again time to try to become a performing artist as well. He recorded a few tracks for Decca which weren't successful, and then he signed to RCA Records. "You Don't Want My Love," one of his first singles for the label, reached number 14 in early 1961, followed by the Top Ten "When Two Worlds Collide" later that summer. Miller wasn't able to immediately follow the songs with another hit single. Two years later, "Lock, Stock and Teardrops" scraped the charts, and he left the record label. Around that time, Miller moved to Hollywood began appearing regularly on The Jimmy Dean Show and The Merv Griffin Show, two of the most popular television programs in the country. His guest spots showcased his new style -- instead of concentrating on hardcore country, he had developed a willfully goofy persona, singing silly novelty songs. He signed a record contract with Smash Records and released his first single for the label, "Dang Me," in the summer of 1964. It was an immediate smash, vaulting to number one and spending six weeks at the top of the charts; it also crossed over into the pop charts, peaking at number seven. "Chug-a-Lug" followed a few months after it, reaching number three on the country charts and nine on the pop charts. At the end of the year, "Do-Wacka-Do" was released, becoming a number 15 hit. Miller began 1965 with his best-known song, "King of the Road." The single spent five weeks at the top of the country charts and became his biggest pop hit, peaking at number four. Its accompanying album, The Return of Roger Miller, was another crossover success, also peaking at number four on the pop album charts and going gold. Miller was at his peak in 1965. Every song he released that year -- "Engine Engine #9," "One Dyin' and a Buryin'," "Kansas City Star," "England Swings" -- reached the country Top Ten, and at the end of the year, his Golden Hits album went Top Ten; it would eventually go gold. In the summer of 1965, he released The Third Time Around, a record that leaned toward his honky tonk roots; it peaked at number 13. After the watershed year of 1965, Miller's career dipped slightly. Although other artists were still having hits with his songs -- Eddy Arnold took "The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me" to number two -- Miller had trouble breaking the Top 40 following the number five hit "Husbands and Wives" in early 1966. He continued to record throughout the late '60s, but fewer and fewer of the songs were becoming hits. Occasionally, he would record the songs of emerging songwriters, whether it was Bobby Russell's "Little Green Apples" (number six, 1968) or Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" (number 12, 1969). Toward the end of the decade and beginning of the '70s, he began to concentrate on honky tonk, although he still made his trademark novelties. During the '70s, he recorded sporadically, preferring to concentrate on his hotel chain, appropriately called King of the Road. "Tomorrow Night in Baltimore," released in the spring of 1971, was his biggest hit of the decade, climbing to number 11. Early in the decade, he wrote songs for Walt Disney's animated adaptation of Robin Hood -- he also provided a voice for the rooster in the film -- as well as the movie Waterhole Three. In 1973, he left Smash/Mercury for Columbia Records. He spent four years at Columbia and only his debut single for the label, "Open Up Your Heart," was a hit, peaking at number 14. Miller didn't record much during the '80s -- his biggest hit was "Old Friends," recorded with Willie Nelson and Ray Price. In the mid-'80s, he wrote the music for Big River, a Broadway adaptation of Mark Twain's works. Both the play and Miller's music were critically acclaimed and enormously popular. Big River won seven Tony Awards and two of those went to Miller, for Best Musical and Outstanding Score. Big River would be the last major work of Miller's career. In 1991, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and died a year later. After his death, his legacy remained strong, as each new generation of country singers found songs in his catalog to cover and reinterpret.
Source: Biographies by CMT and the Roger Miller Web site.

Sheb Wooley was born in Erick, OK, on April 10, 1921. An avid rider from an early age, he was competing in local rodeos before he was ten years old, and by the time he was a teenager was one of the best young riders on the circuit. Music was also one of his interests, and Wooley got his first guitar when his father swapped a shotgun for the instrument. The family was poor, and living was very tough during the 1930s; more than once their crops were virtually blown away by the dry dust bowl winds. Wooley led his own country band in high school, but music didn't offer the prospect of a living, and he made his living for a time working the oil fields of Oklahoma as a welder. As with many Oklahomans looking for a better future, Wooley headed to California in the late '30s and nearly earned a living at a packing plant, moving crates of oranges. By then Wooley was married to Melba Miller, the older sister of future country music star Roger Miller. When World War II broke out, Wooley found himself labeled 4-F (ineligible for military service) because of injuries he'd suffered as a rodeo rider, and he spent much of the war working in defense plants. In 1945, he made his first records for the Bullet label in Nashville, and began appearing as a singer/guitarist on WLAC; the job paid nothing, but allowed him to get paid work elsewhere. His Bullet sides were cut at WSM, home of the Grand Ole Opry, but they saw almost no play or exposure of any kind. A year later he moved to Fort Worth, TX, and got a regular spot on radio there, sponsored by Calumet Baking Powder. Finally, in 1949, at the suggestion of a friend at WSM, Wooley decided to take the plunge and head for California in hope of getting some movie work. Around this same time, he was signed as a songwriter to Hill & Range, the publishing company, which, in turn, led to his being signed by the newly founded MGM Records in 1950. MGM already had a legendary figure in its roster, in the person of Hank Williams, but country music was booming, and there was room for as many worthwhile talents as the label could find. He also took acting lessons in the hope of getting some work on the screen. Wooley succeeded more than he could have hoped in this capacity, appearing in small parts in 40 feature films, beginning with Rocky Mountain, Errol Flynn's final Western, in 1949. His most notable screen came two years later in the classic High Noon (1952), in which he played Ben Miller, the leader of the outlaw gang gunning for town marshal Gary Cooper. He also played an important supporting role in the historical drama Little Big Horn (1951), starring Lloyd Bridges and John Ireland, and was seen in The Man Without a Star (1955), Giant (1956), and Rio Bravo (1959), starring John Wayne. Amid all of his film work, Wooley continued recording and writing songs. It wasn't until 1958, however, that he had a hit of any consequence, and it was a most unexpected song. Wooley had written several songs that were hits for other singers, most notably "Are You Satisfied," which got to number 11 on the country charts as recorded by Rusty Draper in 1955. Wooley had always displayed a gift for parody, and the song he finally scaled the pop charts with was "Purple People Eater," a parody of various pop culture crazes including monster movies (some people at the time suggested -- incorrectly -- that the sci-fi/horror classic The Blob, starring Steve McQueen, which was released at around the same time as Wooley's song, was virtually a film of the song). Wooley had to fight to get the song released, and it ultimately became one of the biggest hit singles in the history of MGM Records. He was unable to follow up the success of "Purple People Eater," however, and it wasn't until 1962 that he had another hit, this time a country chart-topper called "That's My Dad." In 1958, Wooley was cast in the role of Pete Nolan in the television Western Rawhide, starring Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood, which premiered in January of 1959. He later wrote some scripts for the series as well, and in 1959, in order to fulfill public demand for a recording of the series' title song, he recorded his own version of the Rawhide theme song and an entire album of Western songs, which failed to chart. He later recorded an album of folk-style material that was released in the wake of the MGM wide-screen epic blockbuster movie How the West Was Won, but this also failed to catch on with the public. His film work continued during this time, and it was because of movie and television commitments that he was unable to record the song "Don't Go Near the Indians." Instead, former movie cowboy/singer Rex Allen recorded it and had a hit with it. In response to his bad luck, Wooley cut a joke parody follow-up to the song, entitled "Don't Go Near the Eskimos," and created a new, inebriated comic persona to present it. "Ben Colder" was born with "Don't Go Near the Eskimos," and for the rest of his career Wooley -- in a manner anticipating the lot of David Johansen/Buster Poindexter -- had to split his time between appearances as "straight" country/cowboy singer Sheb Wooley and drunken comic Ben Colder. (Some of the other names that Wooley had considered for this persona, according to one source, were "Ben Freezin" and "Klon Dyke"). In 1969, when the country music showcase Hee Haw went on the air, Wooley became the show's resident songwriter, providing the series' comic musical numbers. Ben Colder went on to have several more hits, including "Almost Persuaded No. 2," and in 1968 the Colder persona was voted Comedian of the Year. Wooley continued recording under both guises into the 1980s, although his last chart single in either persona dated back to 1971. In 1998, Wooley was diagnosed with leukemia and spent the next few years in and out of hospitals battling the condition. On September 16, 2003 Sheb Wooley passed away at the age of 82. The previous year Wooley had been honored by Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, who referred to the singer/songwriter/actor as an "American treasure."
Source: Roger Miller biography and CMT biography