The Neighbourhood News

10/06/2025

ONLINE AND PRINT EDITIONS: DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY.

Social:


Web:
theneighbourhoodnews.info

’The Joker’
A Reason To Smile
Dan Rather and Team Steady
Oct 5

To celebrate Steve Miller’s birthday today we have chosen one of the Steve Miller Band’s biggest hits, “The Joker,” as our reason to smile.

I sat down with Miller a few years ago to talk about his career and his eponymous band.

Miller grew up surrounded by music. He was partial to jazz and blues as his mother was a singer, with a voice like Ella Fitzgerald, Miller told me. His godfather was Les Paul, of guitar fame.

As a child growing up in Dallas, he had the opportunity to see a roster of jazz and blues greats perform live: Ray Charles, T-Bone Walker, James Moody, and Charles Mingus, to name a few.

Though he started his professional career as a blues musician, in the mid-1960s he moved to San Francisco and pioneered a new genre of rock ‘n’ roll with catchy, playful lyrics you can’t help but sing along to.

“The Joker” is no exception. It is arguably the band’s most successful and enduring song. It was their first No. 1 hit in 1974, and it topped the U.K. charts 16 years later after being featured in a Levi’s jeans commercial.

I had to ask him about the song’s most famous lyric, “the pompatus of love.” Miller admitted to coining the word “pompatus” as he was writing the song because it just seemed to fit — and that it means “whatever you want it to mean.”

“The truth of the matter is, things that feel spontaneous have a much longer life than things that have got a lot of burnt brain tissue to make them perfect,” he told me.

Share

If you want to enjoy all the songs chosen for A Reason To Smile, you can listen to this Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly.

If you are able to, please support my team, who make pieces like this possible.

Upgrade to paid
No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading, watching, and listening.

Stay Steady,

Dan


Like
Comment
Restack

© 2025 Dan Rather
3939 Bee Cave Rd., Bldg. C-100, Austin, Texas 78746
Unsubscribe

Get the appStart writing

10/04/2025

10/03/2025

Social:


Web:
theneighbourhoodnews.info

09/28/2025

ONLINE AND PRINT EDITIONS: DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY!

Social:


Web:
theneighbourhoodnews.info

’Oh, Pretty Woman’
A Reason To Smile
Dan Rather and Team Steady
Sep 28

This week’s reason to smile is a catchy little tune by a fellow Texan and one of my favorite singers, Roy Orbison. His song, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” hit No. 1 61 years ago this week.

Orbison, who wrote the song with his friend and collaborator Bill Dees, says he was inspired by his beautiful wife Claudette.

The song, which is now part of the fabric of American popular culture, was Orbison’s most popular and successful single. He was awarded a posthumous Grammy for a new recording of “Oh, Pretty Woman” in 1991.

Not surprising, it was the theme song for the Julia Roberts-Richard Gere film of the same name.

It has made all the lists: Grammy Hall of Fame, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and the Library of Congress’s songs included in the National Recording Registry.

Regardless of the accolades, I bet you can’t stop singing it.

Share

If you want to enjoy all the songs chosen for A Reason To Smile, you can listen to this Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly.

If you are able to, please support my team by becoming a paid subscriber. They make pieces like this possible.

Upgrade to paid
No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading, watching, and listening.

Stay Steady,

Dan


Like
Comment
Restack

© 2025 Dan Rather
3939 Bee Cave Rd., Bldg. C-100, Austin, Texas 78746
Unsubscribe

Get the appStart writing

09/26/2025