Now picture this. It is 1965. The Grammy Awards ceremony. And a country artist, a guy known for writing novelty songs and doing comedy bits in Las Vegas lounges, walks away with a stunning 11 Grammy nominations. He wins six of them. In a single year. And nobody, and I mean nobody in the industry saw it coming.

His comedic brilliance wasn’t just funny because it was silly. It was funny because it was structurally masterful. Songs like Dang Me and Chug -a -Lug use internal rhyme, unexpected melodic leaps, and rhythmic surprises that are closer to jazz scat singing than anything in mainstream country.

• This is the story of Roger Miller, one of the most gifted and tragic figures in all of American music
• He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1936, and was raised by his uncle in Erick, Oklahoma
• His childhood was marked by extreme poverty
• King of the Road became one of the biggest crossover hits of the 1960s
• He wrote the Tony Award -winning Broadway musical Big River