All of it reveals Steve Miller to be an absolute pop-music scientist in ways that he hadn’t yet explored. Everything hits at the right time: The cymbal-splashes, the intertwined acoustic guitar lines, the backup harmonies, the wah-way solo. And the band’s groove pulls off a neat trick, sounding like a Sunday-afternoon front-porch jam session but also unfolding with laser precision. Miller sings about himself with an almighty slippery-dirtbag charisma that weirdly reminds me of Sublime’s Bradley Nowell. Green had never heard “The Joker,” and he thought it was hilarious.) The “lovey-dovey, lovey dovey” bit and the line about the peaches and the tree came from the Clovers’ 1954 song “ Lovey Dovey,” so Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary label exec who co-wrote “Lovey Dovey,” sued Miller and got himself a songwriting credit on “The Joker.”Īnd yet, for all their silliness and unoriginality, those lyrics work.
THE GETO BOYS BAND MOVIE
The line about the pompatus of love came from the Medallions’ 1954 doo-wop song “ The Letter.” (There’s a great story about the actor Jon Cryer tracking down Medallions lead singer Vernon Green when Cryer was starring in a 1995 movie called The Pompatus Of Love. The lyrics to “The Joker” are all stitched-together. The best thing is that wormy little bassline, a purposeful amble that puts some serious strut behind Miller’s sheepish grin. And that indolence is the best thing about it. Miller knows how goofy it is you don’t make your guitar sound like a wolf-whistle after singing the word “Maurice” if you’re trying to be serious. There’s no effort expended on “The Joker.” It’s a sunny, indolent song about playing your music in the sun and getting your lovin’ on the run. (“I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree” is a very Wooderson pickup line.) I have a feeling that its extremely obvious weed reference made it onto the radio because the era’s censors didn’t know what “midnight toker” meant, sort of like how Lil Jon was able to keep yelling “skeet skeet skeet” on radio hits for so long. Miller seems to be playing a character, and his character seems to be something like Wooderson from Dazed And Confused. The song is both horny and druggy, but it’s horny and druggy in silly and funny and approachable ways. It’s a slippery, sidelong thing, a lazy song about being a cool motherfucker. (The albums tended to sell better than the singles.) But with “The Joker,” Miller switched up his whole style. Miller and his band had recorded seven albums of grand-scale psychedelic-gunk blues-rock before they made “The Joker,” and they had never charted higher than higher than #69. They signed to Capitol for a vast pile of money and recorded with Paul McCartney. They were one of the bigger bands on that scene, and they backed up Chuck Berry on his 1967 blues-rock move Live At Fillmore Auditorium.
They found a home alongside bands like the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and Moby Grape. In San Francisco, the Steve Miller Blues Band developed a wilder, more psychedelic version of their sound that fit right in with what was happening there. Then, in 1966, they moved to San Francisco. It’s a 6.) Miller and his band played straight-up Chicago blues for a while.
His highest-charting single, 1976’s “ Lowdown,” peaked at #3. (One of those buddies was Boz Scaggs, who left the Steve Miller Blues Band in 1968 to go solo. (Les Paul and T-Bone Walker were family friends.) After dropping out of the University Of Wisconsin, Miller and some buddies moved to Chicago to play blues. Steve Miller grew up between Milwaukee and Dallas, and he was playing guitar and hanging out with guitar geniuses when he was a small kid.