Roger Miller Childhood Home — Erick, Oklahoma

Roger Dean Miller was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 2, 1936, but was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Erick, Oklahoma, after his father died and his mother could not care for her children. He grew up in Erick — a small Beckham County town on Route 66 in the western Oklahoma panhandle — working on cotton farms and developing the quick wit and observational humour that would define his songwriting. He taught himself fiddle and guitar and played local venues as a teenager before enlisting in the Army.

Miller eventually landed in Nashville and became one of the city's most singular characters — a songwriter of extraordinary, almost surreal comic imagination. Between 1964 and 1966 he won eleven Grammy Awards, a record for a country artist at the time, on the strength of songs like "Dang Me," "Chug-a-Lug," "King of the Road," "England Swings," and "Husbands and Wives." "King of the Road" in particular — a gentle, self-deprecating celebration of the hobo life — became one of the most recognisable songs in American music and an international hit.

Erick, Oklahoma, has embraced Miller's memory with considerable warmth. The town features a historical marker and the Erick Sandhills Museum has exhibits related to his life. Erick also claims Sheb Wooley ("Purple People Eater") as a native son, giving this tiny Route 66 town an outsized musical legacy. Miller died in Los Angeles on October 25, 1992, from throat cancer. He was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995.