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Miller, Steve (5th October 1943-Present)

He is a guitarist and singer-songwriter born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, whose father was a pathologist who was involved in amateur recording as well as being 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, 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 Abracadabra.  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.  In 2016 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Steve Miller Band Recordings
Abracadabra (Steve Miller)
Baby Wanna Dance (Steve Miller)

Sources:

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Miller_(musician)
  2. http://www.gangster-of-love.com/bio.html
  3. http://www.stevemillerband.com/