HIS FATHER DIED BEFORE HE TURNED TWO. HIS MOTHER GAVE HIM AWAY. AND HE GREW UP TO WRITE THE HAPPIEST SONG IN COUNTRY MUSIC HISTORY. Roger Miller was one year old when his father died of spinal meningitis. His mother couldn’t feed three boys during the Depression — so she split them up. Each son went to a different uncle. Roger never got over it. He grew up dirt poor on an Oklahoma farm. No phone. Just cotton fields and a one-room schoolhouse. At 17, he wanted a guitar so badly he stole one — then turned himself in the next morning. Years later, he wrote a song about a drifter with nothing to his name, whistling through life like it was all a joke. It became one of the most beloved recordings in American music. But the man who sang it wasn’t imagining the loneliness. He was remembering it.
Roger Miller Turned a Childhood of Loss Into One of Country Music’s Brightest Songs Some lives begin with comfort. Roger…