King Of The Road: The Genius Of Roger Miller

70 songs in chronological order from the original masters, drawn from every label (Mercury/Starday, Decca, RCA, Smash, Columbia and MCA) that this Nashville legend recorded for. In between the 25 chart hits are eight unreleased recordings, all documented by a booklet containing an 8,000-word essay and 24 rare photos. Includes the Top 10 hits When Two Worlds Collide; Dang Me; Chug-A-Lug; King of the Road; Engine, Engine #9; One Dyin' and A-Buryin'; Kansas City Star; England Swings; Husbands and Wives , and more, plus some songs from Big River .

Comedy gets no respect. If Merle Haggard sums up the dilemma of the American working class from the hard-bitten perspective of "Mama Tried" or "The Bottle Let Me Down," he's called a blue-collar poet. If Roger Miller captures the same predicament from the warped, comic perspective of "You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd," he's dismissed as a novelty writer. And yet, a great comic song is just as hard to write as a serious one and sheds just as much light on its subject. Nashville has been home to some gifted comic songwriters over the years--Tom T. Hall, Shel Silverstein, John Prine, and so on--but Miller was the best of the bunch and, as such, one of the best songwriters country music has ever known. He's finally getting some overdue respect with the release of a three-CD anthology, King of the Road: The Genius of Roger Miller. Almost everyone is aware of "King of the Road," the shining pinnacle of Miller's career and one of the most perfect country songs ever written. Many of us remember his brief moment in the sun in 1964-66, when he not only dominated the country charts but also put 10 songs in the pop top-40--including such top-10 hits as "Dang Me," "Chug-a-Lug," "King of the Road," "Engine Engine #9," and "England Swings." Exuberant, infectious comic classics one and all, but The Genius of Roger Miller reveals there was a lot more to this quirky artist than that. --Geoffrey Himes