MILLER: (Singing) I laughed it off when she left. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T WE ALL HAVE THE RIGHT") Only one song, "Don't We All Have The Right," made the billboard country chart, peaking at No. TUCKER: This album was not a commercial success. MILLER: (Singing) Yours is a world I can't live in, but without you, I can't live in mine. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WORLD I CAN'T LIVE IN") Where were the jokes? What they got instead was a Roger Miller shattered by romantic disappointment, asserting that he existed in a world he didn't want to live in. When it arrived in 1970, it must have puzzled his fans. And that's what this album, "A Trip In The Country," represents. But I admire equally his articulate songs of heartache and loneliness. They represent a peak moment in country humor and wit. ![]() I'm not putting down those compositions at all. Once "King Of The Road" crossed over to the pop charts in 1965, Miller churned out the novelty tunes that remain his best-known work. It was one of the first songs to establish Roger Miller as a Nashville songwriter and predates his explosion as a big star in the '60s. TUCKER: That's "Half A Mind," Miller's version of a top 10 country hit when Ernest Tubb cut it back in 1958. ![]() I've got half a mind to leave you but only half the heart to go. MILLER: (Singing) I don't love you like I used to do. So I was excited to read about this reissue containing some of Miller's most artfully crafted songs. So over the years, I put together a mixtape of the album as various songs from it would be posted on the internet, but most of the time the songs would be taken down and disappear again. What few copies I could find for sale were on vinyl and were ridiculously expensive. KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: Many years ago, someone mentioned to me that one of Roger Miller's most underrated albums was 1970s' "A Trip In The Country." When I went to look for it, I found that it was out of print. That's how it is when your house is not a home. ![]() That's how it is when the one you love is gone. Emptiness is all that waits inside for me. ![]() ROGER MILLER: (Singing) I walk up to my door and hate to turn the key. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME") Among them is one rock critic Ken Tucker has long searched for - "A Trip In The Country," released in 1970. Over the summer, a series of reissues of out-of-print Roger Miller albums began. Roger Miller is best known for a series of novelty songs that were big country and pop hits in the 1960s and '70s, songs like "King Of The Road," "Chug-A-Lug" and "You Can't Rollerskate In A Buffalo Herd." But Miller, who died in 1992, was also a serious songwriter who wrote beautiful ballads for artists such as George Jones and Ray Price. This is a hits collection, a summary overview and introduction to his genius, and it succeeds brilliantly on that level. That side might not be mined as deeply as it could have been here, but that's what previous comps like the King of the Road box is for. That might seem like a weighty word for a singer/songwriter whose specialty was lightweight funny songs, but the thing is, those songs have a certain mad ingenious sensibility that nobody else could replicate, and he could dig deeper - witness "I've Been a Long Time Leavin' (But I'll Be a Long Time Gone)" - when he wanted to. All but one track from the seminal 1965 collection Golden Hits is here ("Atta Boy Girl" is the missing culprit - a good song but not enough to tip the scales in favor of the 38-year-old collection), and it spans further than that record, collecting hits from 1967-1970 and ending with the 1986 hit "River in the Rain." While that final song isn't quite of the standard of what preceded it, it provides a nice closer to a set of songs that unequivocally proves Miller's genius. Spanning 20 tracks over the course of one CD, this contains all the big songs: "Dang Me," "Chug-a-Lug," "Do Wacka Do," "In the Summertime (You Don't Want My Love)," "King of the Road," "You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd," "Kansas City Star," "England Swings," and "Husbands and Wives," among others. There have been many collections of Roger Miller's hitmaking peak on Mercury over the years, but few have been as comprehensive or as good as Mercury/Chronicle's 2003 CD, All Time Greatest Hits.
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