Dang Me!

"Roger Muller," he would say introducing himself, "As in Roger Miller!"  Actually, on his birth certificate he was 'Rodger', his German speaking parents trying perhaps  to Americanize 'Rudger'. Still, he signed himself 'Roger'.  At the time the singer Roger Miller was still alive, appearing on television, even if the prime time when his songs ruled the charts had passed.  And Muller identified himself with Miller, even looked a bit like him and shared some of Roger Miller's talents for word play and rhyme.  That's how we became friends, as fans of Roger Miller, and immediately after the introduction, he proceeded to tell me the legend of Roger Miller, which I am going to repeat now before getting to the core of my story about Rodger.

In the late 1950s Roger Miller was hired by a Nashville music publisher as a staff songwriter.  That was a common practice in those days (remember the Brill Building?) songwriters in publishers' offices churning out tunes which the latter would pitch to performers.  It was an orderly system, the songwriters could concentrate on songwriting, while the publishers took care of the sales, and the performers could count on quality, and sometimes received merchandise (songs) custom made for them.   In today's chaotic environment (are there still staff songwriters?) songwriters are on their own to peddle their products, and performers are often bombarded by materials from too many unfiltered sources.

Anyway,  young Roger (Miller) was composing songs that went nowhere, unoriginal moon-June-spoon stuff, while at the same time walking around the office and singing to himself silly kindergarten rhymes. Then one day, the publisher suggested to Roger to write songs out of these nonsensical ditties, and that is how Roger got started as one of the prime songwriters and performers in Nashville. And that's how we got this:

Roses are red and violets are purple
Sugar is sweet and so is maple syrple.
I'm the seventh out of seven sons
My pappy was a pistol
I'm a son of a gun.
CHORUS:
Dang me, dang me
They oughta take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman would you weep for me.

And this:

My uncle used to love but she died
A chicken ain't chicken 'til it's licken good and fried
Keep on the sunny side
My uncle used to love me but she died

Roger Muller shared Roger Miller's talent for punning and inventive rhyming. And that's how he and I began to amuse ourselves and our mates with puns and rhymes, writing together limericks and short ditties on the subjects at hand, that is whatever crossed our path on a given day, from the radio, television news, or newspapers.  We didn't discriminate, and we didn't avoid any topics, and our sometime hangman's humour got us in hot water on occasion when we mocked some politician's or celebrity's demise.

Then there was an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the President of the United States.  I came up with the seed, the first line, and Roger filled in the rest of the limerick which ended with a vague suggestion that the next attempt might meet with success.

Someone who heard our creation apparently did not appreciate its sophisticate irony, and soon thereafter Roger, or since this was an official occasion, Rodger, was made to  entertain a visit from two dour faced, suited gentlemen of the Secret Service.  He managed to weasel out of the situation, and later reported to me that he hadn't realized that the Secret Service worked so far from Washington, and that he saved my butt, as he put it.  And it's a good thing too, since I already had a file with the FBI.

Unless Roger, wherever he is now, wrote down and stored our work somewhere, it is all lost to the history of fine literature.