Some people call him the Joker. Some call him the Space Cowboy. Still others call him the Gangster of Love — or Maurice.
But Steve Miller merely calls himself a working musician — a guy who has been creating and playing music since the 1960s. He formed the Steve Miller Blues Band in San Francisco in 1967 and his first album, the psychedelic blues set “Children of the Future,” was released in 1968. His latest release, “Bingo!” is a collection of R&B cover tunes and came out June 15.
In the lyrics of one of his bigger hits, Miller plans to “keep on a rock’n” — despite the shrinking recording industry and the changes in radio programming and recording technology that he says is ruining the music.
“I grew up in Texas in the late 1950s before radio became homogenized,” Miller said in a telephone interview from the road.
“Radio stations had personalities and reflected the cities where they were. Our station in Dallas was heavy into blues and rhythm and blues. It played Bo Diddly and Little Richard, phenomenal music. Later, when radio got nationalized, it became the same everywhere.”
Major radio stations today are tightly formatted, but lucky for him, Miller said, he fits firmly into one of those formats. “The reason you hear my music on the radio is that somebody somewhere tested it in a focus group and decided that it was what radio stations needed to play to sell stuff. The Clear Channels of the world locked me somewhere in a stash of preselected ‘classic rock’ music.”
Among Miller’s classics are “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Take the Money and Run,” “Living in the U.S.A.,” “Jet Airliner,” “Jungle Love,” “Abracadabra,” “The Joker,” “Space Cowboy” and “Rock’n Me.” Although his debut album didn’t crack the Top 100 album chart, it sold 150,000 copies, Miller said. “That was what Johnny Mathis was selling in those days. It was a good start. I’d love to have that success today.”
By contrast, “Bingo!” went to No. 1 on the national blues charts and has sold 24,000 copies. “That’s how small the business is these days,” Miller said. “At this rate, it’ll take forever to reach ‘Children of the Future’ levels.” Although “Bingo!” is his first studio release in 17 years, Miller hasn’t been inactive. “I’ve been doing lots and lots of recording.
“Probably 10 to 15 projects in those years, jazz projects, blues projects — all new music. But this stuff (covers of some of the classic R&B and blues tunes he grew up listening to) is better than that,” he said.
“I’m 66 years old. I can write all I want and record all I want. Everybody acts like they’re waiting around for my next new stuff, but that’s (nonsense). They want ‘The Joker’ and ‘Fly Like an Eagle.’ The last time I put out a new album was 1993, and when I’d say we were going to do something from the new album, 5,000 people would get up and go buy a beer, and they wouldn’t come back until they heard the opening licks of ‘Space Cowboy.’ “
