Dang Me

"Dang Me" is a 1964 song by American country music artist Roger Miller, and that year's Grammy Award winner for Best Country & Western Song. It was Miller's first chart-topping country hit and first Top Ten pop music hit,^[1] it was a novelty song^[1] whose "jazzy instrumental section" helped make it "the quintessential example of Miller's lighthearted humor, which brought him many more hits".^[1]

History

Newly signed with the Mercury Records subsidiary Smash Records,^[2] Miller gathered on January 10-11, 1964, with music producer Jerry Kennedy, music arranger Bill Justis, and session musicians Ray Edenton and Harold Bradley (guitars), Hargus "Pig" Robbins (piano), Bob Moore (bass), and Buddy Harman (drums) at the Quonset Hut Studio on Nashville, Tennessee's Music Row.^[3] On the second day, they recorded a run-through of "Dang Me," with Miller giving rehearsal direction (such as "one more time" at the end of the first chorus). The run-through was the final version released to radio. Miller, in his official biography, recalled writing the song in four minutes in a Phoenix, Arizona hotel room. Johnny Cash in his last major interview would claim Miller wrote the song at the Joshua Tree in California when Miller got out of the car with pen and paper to go write the song. Cash asked Miller what he was doing to which Miller replied "I'm writing a song. You can't come look."^[4]

Kennedy had already started work on many other of that sessions' songs before he eventually brought the recording of "Dang Me" to his home. Upon playing it, he recalled, "My kids came screaming down the stairs when 'Dang Me' came on. They thought that was the greatest thing they'd ever heard. I started playing it over and over and over again...".^[3] Kennedy and Mercury Records chose "Dang Me" (copyrighted by Tree Publishing, BMI) as the first single of the May 1964 LP Roger and Out (Smash SRS-67046).^[5] The album was shortly retitled and rereleased that year as Dang Me (Smash SRS-67049)

The song spent 25 weeks on the Billboard country-music chart,^[3] reaching number one,^[6] and peaked at number seven on the magazine's pop chart. It went on to appear on numerous Miller compilations. On film or tape, Miller performs it, with other songs, in the 1966 concert film The Big T.N.T. Show, and as part of a closing-number medley on season three, episode #21, of The Muppet Show in 1979.^[7]

Cover versions

"Dang Me" has appeared on recordings by at least eight other performers as disparate as Buck Owens and Johnny Cash on his 1999 album Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Rivers recorded live in 1964 on Here We à Go Go Again!, Sammy Davis, Jr. on the live album That's All (1967), and Sweet G.A. Brown on his Miller Time album in 2011. The Hollies, with Graham Nash in the band, performed it live on tour in 1968.

Chart performance

References

External links

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics