Stevie "Guitar" Miller's brush with greatness

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 21st, 2005

From the liner notes of “King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents The Steve Miller Band” (King Biscuit Flower Hour Records 79301880001-2):

…We were all under control of our road manager Lester Pouncey, an ex-Marine Sergeant and Vietnam vet from Brooklyn who collected the money, kept the band moving and was our MC for the shows. Lester counted every penny and none of the promoters ever questioned him, they could see it wouldn’t be worth it.

Every day started with Lester pounding on your hotel room door yelling, “Steven, get up and get moving now!” It never did any good to argue with Lester, he’d have you up and laughing and moving before you were even awake. We’d head to the lobby, pile in a rental car, drive to the airport, board a plane and fly to the next city, get another rental car and check into a Holiday Inn and then head over to the venue, usually a Paramount or Fox theater, and do the sound check and start it up all over again. Many years later I met George Burns and told him I’d played every vaudeville theater he had played and we spent the evening discussing the merits of each theater.

The tour depicted took place mainly in 1973. No year (or set of circumstances) is specified for the somewhat incongrouous meeting between Burns and Miller.

One half of us here (the male half) had a fondness for Miller, having seen one of the shows on his Joker tour (with the James Cotton Blues Band and Boz Scaggs opening). So this story has a special resonance.