He is a guitarist and singer-songwriter born in
Waukesha, Wisconsin.His
father was a pathologist who was involved in amateur recording and a jazz
enthusiast, and his mother was a singer.His godfather was the singer Les Paul, who was an
electric guitar pioneer, and after he received his first guitar when he was
four, he gave him his first tuition. When he was 12 he formed his first band, The Marksmen,
and a friend of his at school was Royce Scaggs, later Boz, who he asked to
sing for them.He studied
literature at the University of Wisconsin and here he formed The Ardells that
had Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, who he taught chords on the guitar to so he
could play.Although he spent
a year with his studies in the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, he left
school prior to graduating and moved to Chicago with San Francisco coming
soon after.He was in the
Goldberg-Miller Blues Band with Barry Goldberg from 1965 and after
releasing one single he went on to form the Steve Miller Band that would bring
him success and acclaim. The band
were brought together in the 1968 and although they had the albums
Sailor and Brave New World
, with Paul McCartney
appearing under the name Paul Ramon, appear in the Top 40, they didn't see major
success until 1973 with the album The Joker.In 1972 his neck was broken in a car accident on the way
to an airport but although he was in a lot of pain he did not cancel the
American part of the tour he was on until he became ill suffering from
hepatitis.From then on the
band produced albums that were almost continually in the charts with many
hit singles coming from them.He took a break from 1977 to 1981 and then came back with a new
style to them such as the No. 1 Abradacadbra.He stopped producing records in
1993 although he performed and worked on the Grammy award nominee Flaming
Pie by Sir Paul McCartney.He resumed touring in 1995 and as of 2001 was still selling over a
million albums a year.
Steve Miller Band Recordings
Abracadabra (Steve Miller)
Baby Wanna Dance (Steve
Miller)
Never Say No (John
Massaro/Gary Mallaber/Kenny Lee Lewis)
