Miller Francis Jr.
Miller Francis grew up in Anniston, Alabama. He attended high school when a Freedom Rider bus was attacked and burned just outside of town.
Inspired by Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, he studied fiction writing at the University of Alabama, and was present when George Wallace made his stand in the "schoolhouse door" for racial segregation.
Miller joined thousands at a rally in Montgomery to welcome those who had demonstrated against racial oppression in the Selma-to-Montgomery march. He moved to Atlanta in 1967 and was active in protests against segregation as well as the Vietnam War. As forces for radical change gained momentum in the late Sixties, Miller became more active politically, writing music and film reviews for The Great Speckled Bird, a weekly underground newspaper, some of which were reprinted by other underground newspapers. He also contributed briefly to Rolling Stone and Creem. He covered national music events such as the Woodstock Music Festival, the Memphis Blues Festival and the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. His enthusiastic "discovery" article about The Allman Brothers Band's first performance in Piedmont Park is still being quoted (Scott Freeman, Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band). As early as 1969, Rolling Stone magazine called Miller "one of the best rock and roll writers the underground has produced...unique in his ability to place rock in the perspective of the revolution". In his book The Paper Revolutionaries, Laurence Leamer called Miller "the most articulate of the cultural radicals. [He] maneuvers the symbols of cultural radicalism with the subtlety and sureness of Marx working with the tools of economic determinism." As different social movements began to develop out of the movement, Miller also wrote articles dealing with the oppression of women and homosexuals.
From 1982 until 1996, Miller was host/DJ of a music show on WRFG Atlanta entitled "Revolution Rock: By All Music Necessary", giving exposure to the most radical music of the time including punk, reggae, folk, electronica and jazz. He also interviewed many of the key artists of the period including Fela Kuti, Joe Strummer, KRS-One and Henry Rollins, as well as local punk bands like Neon Christ.
Miller has more recently spent several years completing a novel, If Heaven's Not My Home, and is now actively seeking its publication.
34 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 8 December 1969
EACH OF the record albums discussed here could be termed a masterpiece worthy of a full-length "rave." But the Review format can often be nothing ...
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers Band
Special Feature by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 19 May 1969
Upon first seeing the Allman Brothers Band, an interracial rock and roll band from the heart of segregated, reactionary Georgia not only calling themselves brothers, ...
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers Band: Idlewild South (Atco Capricorn SD 33-342)
Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 9 November 1970
WHAT A RELIEF to hear the new Allman Brothers album! When they played in the park a few weeks ago, everything was beginning to sound ...
Live Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 16 May 1970
IF YOU WERE one of the few people who wasn't at the Sports Arena Sunday afternoon for the Grateful Dead concert, you've probably heard by ...
Report by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 30 March 1970
SANTANA AND the Allman Brothers Band flew right into a hornet's nest last week when they showed up to play at the Municipal Auditorium: there ...
Live Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 27 October 1969
FRIDAY AFTERNOON was almost frightening — all those big names, the abruptness of the pop festival's appearance, the overall speculative nature of this ambitious musical ...
Live Review by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 18 August 1969
"I'd like for them to hear the real things. I don't think yet that most of the white people like my music because it's blues. I ...
Film/DVD/TV Review by Miller Francis, The Great Speckled Bird, 13 January 1969
Yellow Submarine is rapidly on its way to canonization, so I felt that along with unrestrained praise for its animation designer Heinz Edelmann, should go ...
The Byrds: Glenn Memorial Church, Atlanta GA
Live Review by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 7 February 1969
THE BYRDS are, always have been, and (as things look now) will continue to be the most consistently excellent, and under-rated, rock and roll group ...
Report by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 1 September 1969
"Man, what done got into them ofays?" one asked. "It ain't nothing. They just trying to get back, that's all" "Get back?" said the ...
Canned Heat, Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter: The Blues
Essay by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 16 June 1969
"All new technologies bring on the cultural blues, just as the old ones evoke phantom pain after they have disappeared." — Marshall McLuhan, War and ...
Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music (PBL; dir. Robert Elfstrom)
Film/DVD/TV Review by Miller Francis Jr., Gene Guerrero, The Great Speckled Bird, 24 March 1969
TO SAY THAT the 90-minute Johnny Cash PBL special was the best television show I've ever seen is to detract from the compliment; perhaps it ...
Fats Domino: Antoine Fats Domino: Fats Is Back (Reprise RS 6304)
Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 24 January 1969
ROCK ENTHUSIASTS sometimes like to quibble over just which rock and roll song started the whole thing: in the liner notes for this album producer ...
Report and Interview by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 20 October 1969
OURS IS AN age of reluctant ambivalence. The impact of the new is devastatingly real, but the clinging corpse of what has been and what ...
The Doors: The Soft Parade (Elektra)
Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 20 October 1969
"Callin' on the gods" ...
The Everly Brothers: Roots (Warner Brothers-Reprise 1752)
Review by Miller Francis Jr., Gene Guerrero, The Great Speckled Bird, 7 July 1969
"Roll along, along Jordan,Roll me on my way. Roll along, along Jordan,Roll me home today. " ...
Hampton Grease Band: Georgian Terrace Ballroom, Atlanta GA
Live Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 1 December 1969
THREE TURKEY TRIPS ...
Hampton Grease Band: The Hampton Grease Band: Suck Rock
Profile and Interview by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 13 October 1969
"Give me a gun, and I'll blow your fucking head off!" — Bruce Hampton ...
Report by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 23 June 1969
AN ARTICLE ON the Memphis Country Blues Festival in a local Memphis newspaper was headlined: "BLUES ARE REBORN IN COTTON-FIELD HEAT." ...
Jefferson Airplane: Volunteers (RCA Victor)
Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 1 December 1969
Look what's happening out in the streets Got a revolution Got to revolutionHey, I'm dancing down the streetsGot a revolution Got to revolutionAin't it amazing, all ...
Jefferson Airplane: The Jefferson Airplane: Municipal Auditorium, Atlanta
Live Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 31 August 1970
NO DOUBT about it, as somebody on stage at the Municipal Auditorium put it, the Jefferson Airplane concert Monday night was "the Atlanta rock event ...
Johnny Jenkins: Nothing But The Blues
Interview by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 28 September 1970
TON TON Macoute! was recorded in Macon, Georgia at Capricorn Records, at an 8 track studio built "in memory of Otis Redding" by Phil Walden, ...
Profile by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 2 April 1970
NO ONE IN the entire world of rock has created a body of music to compare with the work of John Mayall. If the process ...
MC5: The MC5: Kick Out the Jams (Elektra)
Review by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 17 March 1969
"Works of art which lack artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose both works of art with a wrong ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis (NBC Television Special)
Film/DVD/TV Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 13 December 1968
If you're lookin' for trouble, you came to the right place If you're lookin' for trouble, just look right in my face... ...
The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet (London PS 539)
Review by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 17 February 1969
THE ROLLING Stones are at the artistic peak of their career: Beggars Banquet is perhaps their finest work to date. It is not merely, as ...
Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground (MGM SE-4617)
Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 4 August 1969
TAKE IT OR leave it I've never known anyone who was neutral toward The Velvet Underground. They either turn you on, or it's the worst ...
The Who: Woodstock: Talking About My Generation
Essay by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 15 June 1970
"I'm looking for me, You're looking for you We're looking at each other and we don't know what to do." — 'The Seeker' by the Who ...
Profile by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 13 April 1970
"I don't wanna wreck nobody's soul I just wanna rock & roll!" — Johnny Winter ...
List of genre pieces
Easy Rider (Columbia Pictures; Dir. Dennis Hopper)
Film/DVD/TV Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 29 September 1969
"The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations. (Or if it is an idea, it ...
Essay by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 4 May 1970
Part 1 WOODSTOCK IS AN amazing piece of technology, one of the most important films ever made. We have long been accustomed to experiencing films as ...
Woodstock producer Bob Maurice
Interview by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 4 May 1970
(The following dialogue with Bob Maurice, producer of the Woodstock film, is an edited version of a long interview taped last week at the Marriott.) ...
Zabriskie Point (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Film/DVD/TV Review by Miller Francis Jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 2 April 1970
"I understand man, with his faults and his virtues; those of many men I know, and no doubt my own as well. But what I ...
Atlanta International Pop Festival
Comment by Miller Francis jr., The Great Speckled Bird, 30 June 1969
"If you want to come up with a singular, most important trend in this new music, I think it has to be something like: it ...
back to LIBRARY
