Song:The Joker
Album:Young Hearts: Complete Greatest Hits
Steve Miller Band started out as a popular blues based psychedelic band in the late 60s and achieved mainstream commercial success in the mid-70s. The Joker was their first number one pop hit. Miller was born Oct. 5, 1943 in Milwaukee. His mom was a singer and his dad liked to tinker with recording equipment and was very good friends with guitar legend Les Paul. Paul taught Miller to play guitar and encouraged him to continue. The family moved to Dallas in 1950 and Miller formed his first band The Marksmen with William "Boz" Scaggs. Miller's dad became friends with blues guitar legend T-Bone Walker and Steve was a very interested observer when Walker would visit them. Miller moved back to Milwaukee and formed The Ardells with Scaggs and keyboard player Ben Sidran. After moving to Demnark to study literature, Miller moved to Chicago and immersed himself in the blues scene. He formed The Goldberg-Miller Blues Band with Barry Goldberg and moved to New York. After one unsuccessful single on Epic, Miller moved to San Francisco in 1967. Steve Miller Band was formed with James Cook on guitar, Lonnie Turner on bass and Tim Davis on drums. Boz Scaggs joined soon after. They signed with Capitol Records. At the time, they were more popular as an album group with songs like Space Cowboy and Living In The USA. After recovering from a broken neck suffered in a car accident, Miller formed a new band with Gerald Johnson on bass, Dick Thompson on keyboards and John King on drums. The 1973 album The Joker was their first album and The Joker was Miller's first ever chart single and it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Folks have speculated about the song's meaning but it's basically nonsense with Miller jokingly calling himself "Space Cowboy" and making up words like "pompetus". He even used a line from the 1954 Clovers song Lovey Dovey so Eddie Curtis and Ahmet Ertegun got a songwriting credit. Miller continued to have success through the 70s and had number one hits with Rock 'n' Me in 1976 and Abracadabra in 1982. All his hits are on this comp. Miller faded in the 80s and last recorded in 1993. But he still tours and announced plans for a new album that has yet to materialize. Here's the video for The Joker by Steve Miller Band.
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