“You keep that up, and you’ll be famous one day,” offered electric guitar pioneer Les Paul upon hearing 5-year-old Steve Miller do his thing. By his teens, Miller was fronting his own band, The Marksmen — the name taken from the Dallas boy’s St. Mark’s School after moving from Milwaukee. Miller honed his chops on the Chicago blues scene before migrating to San Francisco, where his “space blues” band quickly rose to the top of the Summer of Love heap. In the ’70s, Miller achieved superstardom as the king of super-catchy FM radio rock exemplified by “Fly Like an Eagle” and “The Joker”. His ultra-smooth cover of Rosco Gordon’s R&B classic “Just a Little Bit,” is the perfect synthesis of old and new school Space Cowboy.
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