Roger Miller: In The Red For Eight Of His Ten Singing Years

ROGER MILLER – both on and off record – has a quiet, relaxed, uncomplicated approach to his music and to life. Yet he's had 10 Top Ten discs in the States (two of them big sellers here) and his work is always so cleverly commercial that I couldn't help wondering if his simple, easy-going exterior was just a front for a very cunning operator. Was he a highly sophisticated, complex man who sang about "rooms to let 50 cents" without any personal experience of poverty? Was he selling a calculated commodity?