Ron Miller

Jul 30 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IN JUST a few words, the boy from Chicago, who had played the piano in the corner of lonely bars, reached the mood felt by lovers everywhere, when reality once more creeps through the curtains.

That is the gift of the lyricist. Of course, it’s not found every time. Often you’re mining for shining stones in the dark.

But with Touch Me in the Morning, Ron Miller caught the moment – “Touch me in the morning, then just walk away, we don’t have tomorrow, but he had yesterday . . . well, I can say goodbye in the cold morning light, but I can’t watch love die in the warmth of the night”.

In another song, For Once In My Life, now most associated with Stevie Wonder, Miller catches the defiance and optimism of the loser finally on to something good. It has been covered by more than 270 singers.

Miller spent much of his childhood following the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which fed his early songwriting efforts with the notion that winning isn’t everything.

He joined the US Marines, serving in various places in the world, but found it difficult to settle on his return to civilian life – selling washing machines for a while. Berry Gordy heard him playing the piano in a bar and asked him to join his emerging Tamla Motown label. Miller produced records as well as writing songs.

The quality of his songs was uneven, but there were always the gems – A Place in the Sun (1966) and Yester-me, Yeterday-you, Yester-day (1969) were hits for Stevie Wonder. In that period, when writing for the young Wonder, Miller demonstrated how what was ostensibly a seasonal pop song Someday At Christmas, could carry a chilling message, “Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys, playing with bombs like kids play with toys”.

In 1973, Diana Ross had success with Touch Me In the Morning.

Three years later, Miller’s then girlfriend, Charlene Duncan, recorded another of his songs, I’ve Never Been To Me for Motown and it eventually became a number one in Britain in 1982.

In common with many highly accomplished songwriters, Miller yearned to have a hit musical on Broadway. But his efforts, Daddy Goodness (1979), starring Fred Payne, and Cheery (1973), didn’t roll the tills, though the latter included I’ve Never Been A Woman Before, recorded by Barbra Streisand.

Ron Miller, songwriter; born 1933, died July 23, 2007.