ASCAP Golden Note Award

Golden Note Award is presented to Steve Miller – Songwriter and Performer of Innovative, Inspired and Iconic Rock & Roll Earning Him an Extraordinary Place in American Popular Music.

ASCAP Golden Note recipient Steve Miller is an American master of Rock, Blues and Pop who has been making his musical mark for four decades, contributing song after song that have become radio anthems, including "The Joker," "Take the Money and Run," "Rockin' Me," "Fly Like an Eagle," "Swingtown" and "Abracadabra." Miller had the rare experience of face-to-face childhood music lessons from guitar greats Les Paul and T-Bone Walker, both of whom were friends of Miller's music enthusiast father. Inspired and influenced by those and other musical pioneers, Miller grew up to forge his own idiosyncratic musical path.

Born in Milwaukee and raised in Dallas, Miller played in bands beginning in middle school, where he met his friend and fellow future music star, Royce (Boz) Scaggs. Their musical relationship would continue during their college years at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where the two performed in a group known as the Ardells which also featured Ben Sidran. After college, Miller gravitated to the new blues-rock scene in Chicago, forming the Goldberg-Miller Blues Band with keyboard player Barry Goldberg and signing to Epic Records in 1965. It was Miller's move to San Francisco, where a rock music explosion was taking place, that proved to be a turning point for the guitarist. In the wake of the success of Bay Area groups like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, major labels were on the hunt for local talent and Capitol Records signed the Steve Miller Band (granting the artist creative control, rare at the time) in 1968, the beginning of a long relationship.

In the late 1960s, record labels demanded that their artists release albums frequently. Between 1968 and 1972, Miller and band recorded seven albums, including Children of the Future, Sailor, Brave New World and Number 5. None of them contained major hit singles but all included enduring originals by Miller and his bandmates. A few examples: "Baby's Calling Me Home" (by Boz Scaggs), "Quicksilver Girl," "Space Cowboy," "My Dark Hour" (a collaboration with Paul McCartney), "Going to the Country" (written with Ben Sidran) and "Journey from Eden." A 1972 automobile accident sidelined Miller for nearly a year, but he returned in 1973 with the album titled The Joker and the clever and catchy single of the same name which rose to Number One on the Billboard chart.

After the success of The Joker, Miller took some time off and retreated to a home he had purchased on a remote hilltop in Marin County, outside Novato, CA, where he built a recording studio. It was there that he spent months scrupulously overdubbing Fly Like An Eagle and its successor, Book of Dreams. The albums had been recorded at CBS Studios in San Francisco. Released in 1976 and 1977, respectively, they set a new standard for recording studio mastery and epitomized the term, "radio ready." They burst with hit singles and memorable album tracks, including "Fly Like an Eagle," "Take the Money and Run," "Wild Mountain Honey," "Dance, Dance, Dance," Rockin' Me," "True Fine Love" and Miller's infectious cover of Paul Pena's "Jet Airliner." In the early 80s, there was another international smash, the brilliant pop confection, "Abracadabra." Later on in that decade, Miller offered two more beautifully crafted albums that ought to have been bigger hits than they were: Living in the 20th Century and Born 2B Blue, the latter an exploration of blues, jazz and standards.

The Steve Miller Band has sold a cumulative 25 million albums and new generations of fans keep buying their two greatest hits collections, Greatest Hits: 1974-78 (which has sold more than thirteen million copies) and Young Hearts – Complete Greatest Hits. Miller remains a touring powerhouse, playing sold out dates around the world. May 2008 will, in fact, see the release of the first-ever Steve Miller performance DVD, Live in Chicago, in which the blues rocker returns to the city that helped forge his unique musical style.