Growing up, I really liked Roger Miller’s songs.
Not so much the cutesy ones, such as “England Swings” — which clearly reflected his first visit to England but had nothing to say.
And not — sorry — some of the smoothed-around-the-edges songs that he wrote after he really hit it big (“Little Toy Trains” — self-consciously saccharine; I know some readers will object, but I’m right).
But especially in the early days, even when he was being silly or witty, he wrote about genuine emotions.
One of his songs (a minor hit) that you probably never heard of led directly to a big hit by, of all people, The Monkees.
First, Roger’s song….
Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart heard that, took the song’s last line, and used it as both the opening line and the title for this song by The Monkees….
I hated that Monkees record.
As a terribly sad P.S., years later Tommy Boyce would put into motion the scenario described in “One Dyin’ And A Buryin’.”
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Thanks Dan.
Always loved Roger and his music. Great piece of trivia!
As to the Monkees LP, just the sight of the cover brought back a flood of memories. Most of them not so good…but I still liked the guys and played the grooves of that piece of vinyl.
It reminds of the time I sat next to one of the Bellamy Brothers on a long flight. I told him “Thanks for Let your love flow, that song got me through some really rough times” and he said “Us too”
I always enjoy hearing how we/things get connected because of the smallest things. Little miracles perhaps? ‘-)
Make that “the grooves off that piece of vinyl.”
Nice to see another great Roger fan out there Dan. Interesting story about the Monkees song… I didn’t know that. So… one RM fan to another.. why in the world is 2/3 of the RM box set in mono? Those arrangements were so rich, the Smash recordings so good. Why all the mono? And do you think they will ever release “3rd Time Around” and “The Return of Roger Miller” on CD? Hope so. My vinyl versions still sound good but they can’t last forever. He was a great wordsmith though, wasn’t he?
Somewhere around here I have a copy of Roger’s “Vance” ..a great example of “speak sing ” story telling !!
“Vance” was a Bobby Russell composition.. but it was definitely Roger’s brand of storytelling.
@ Russ: I’m not an expert on Roger’s music (although I do have the box set).
But recently a friend of mine explained that of the hits from the ’60s that were released both in stereo and in mono, usually the stereo versions were vastly inferior to the mono.
That’s because they would typically put the vocal on one channel and the instruments on the other — which is “stereo” but also is pretty pointless.
Coincidentally, you hear just that in the opening of the Monkees song in this blog posting. And it sounds pretty dumb.
That’s true about mono vs stereo. It really depends how it was recorded. That was the era of 3 and 4 track machines rolling at 15ips. You’d sometimes split the backing track with background vocals over 1 -3 tracks, and leave the last for lead vocal. “stereo” versions would be a glorified “panning” of the lead vocal on one channel and the backing track on the other, so they were “mono compatible” when you played them on any record player. Liberty Records was especially bad for this, calling it “visual sound stereo” on the Gary Lewis and the Playboys LPs I have (and no doubt a lot of the others the company put out). I think they mixed it that way for the LP though, as a CD release with Gary Lewis I have, went back to the session masters, and was remixed in true stereo (which usually means a stereo recorded backing track L and R mics carefully placed to achieve the stereo effect)
The other issue could be that the stereo masters were lost. Record companies have been known to not store their analog masters well. I remembering reading a billboard article in the 90s about Warner storing analog master tapes in a unlocked damp warehouse. Not good.
For the Beatles, it’s fairly well known that most collectors prefer the mono version of last years box set over the stereo version because the Beatles participated in the mono mixes. They didn’t in the stereo, that was up to George Martin and the Engineer who often just did the vocal panning to a true stereo backing track (though it was sometimes mono)