Big Miller

It will have to be a big statue, because he wasn't called Big Miller for nothing -- although he did look pint-size when standing alongside his fellow blues shouter Big Joe Turner during a reunion tour in the '70s. The plan is to unveil a life-sized statue of Miller by the year 2003 in one of Edmonton, Alberta's city parks. It is a long way from the Kansas City jazz scene that welcomed Miller as a singer beginning in his teenage years. But Edmonton was this artist's adopted home from the '70s up until his death in the early '90s. It is said that he lived in the backseat of the car he'd driven into Edmonton in for several months before becoming established enough to afford his own place, which seems a bit harsh for a fellow who had already paid dues performing with the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Hopefully this didn't take place in the winter, when that northern city's temperatures can dip to 30 below zero and stay that way for weeks. If so, they might have wound up calling him "Frozen Miller" and a statue would not have been needed. He was born Clarence Horatius Miller, and perhaps his most defining career moment came in the '50s with his participation in the Jon Hendricks revue entitled The Evolution of the Blues. Miller's size, vocal power, and intense stage presence combined to drive home the legend of the blues shouters, men who could sing over an entire big band without using a microphone. The success of this show led to a recording contract with Columbia, for whom the artist cut several albums, a pair of which were reissued on a CD package in 2000. The earlier stages of his recording career included a stint with Savoy, which was one of the first jazz labels to record him. A group led by Clifford Curry known as the Clovers, which would later change its...