Roger Miller Album: “Best of Roger Miller [St. Clair]”

The first thing you need to know is that your music library needs to have at least two Roger Miller CDs in it. First, you need to have a hits collection of his work from the Sixties. The hits collection is required to have "King of the Road," "Dang Me," "You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd," "Do-Wacka-Do," and "England Swings." Almost all of the hits collections are solid on that score, as is this one. With 30 tracks it would be hard for it not to be one of the better Roger Miller hits collections that you are going to come across.

Obviously Roger Miller is remember for his humorous novelty songs, but he wrote some certified popular and country classics including "Invitation to the Blues," "That's the Way I Feel," Half a Mind," "Home," "The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me," and "Billy Bayou." Miller only recorded a few of these so you will not hear many of them on this album, but they do remind us that Miller was a very good songwriter. He played not only guitar but fiddle, piano, banjo, and drums. This album includes another novelty hit, "Chug-a-Lug," his original songs "Husbands & Wives" and nice ocvers of Bobby Russell's "Little Green Apples" and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee."

However, in addition to an album like this one you need to have his Tony Award winning musical "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Connecting the dots between the two is easy. I mean, the only other person you could think of to write the songs for a musical based on a Mark Twain book would have to be Randy Newman. "Big River" won seven Tony Awards and two of those went to Miller, for Best Musical and Outstanding Score.

There was always a brain (and a heart) behind all those funny little songs Miller sang in the Sixties, and it comes full flower in "Big River." But the evidence was always there if you paid attention. After all, "Trailers for sale or rent," is an opening line worthy of Dylan. Just believe me when I insist that you need to have two Roger Miller albums in your music library. There is just no way you are going to be disappointed.

This recording is at a slower tempo than his hit recordings, and I didn't like it.

This was everything I could remember and a few I forgot by Roger Miller and although the recordings are really good they are not the single 45 versions I remember. In most cases they are better recordings, but just not the same.