50 Years Later, The Meaning Behind “The Joker” by Steve Miller Band

Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” may never have existed had it not been for a hit R&B group from the 1950s. Over the years, Miller has cited “The Joker” as his first hit single and the song that revitalized his career. It’s one of the bands signature tracks with its instantly recognizable lyrics like, I’m a joker / I’m a smoker / I’m a midnight toker. Below, we look at the journey of how this hit came to be.

Meaning Behind “The Joker”

In 1954, The Clovers had a hit on their hands with “Lovey Dovey” co-written by Eddie Curtis and Co-Founder and President of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun, the label The Clovers were signed to at the time. The song spent five weeks at No. 2 on the R&B charts in the U.S. that same year. Roughly 20 years later, the song had new life breathed into it when Miller sampled it for his signature hit, “The Joker,” released in 1973. Though he penned most of the song solo, Curtis and Ertegun are credited as writers, seeing as he used the lines, You’re the cutest thing that I ever did see / I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree / Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time, from “Lovey Dovey” in “The Joker.”

It served as the title track of Steve Miller Band’s 1973 album that marked a departure in sound, as the band transitioned from a psychedelic vibe to a sound that blended soft rock and blues. At the time, Miller was at the end of a seven-year contract with Capitol Records and was convinced he was going to be dropped from the label following its release since he’d yet to produce a hit. That’s when “The Joker” came to save the day.

“‘The Joker’ was just a song I wrote,” Miller recalls to AXS TV of his mentality at the time. “I didn’t think it was a hit single or anything.”

When he was done with the album, some people from the record label came in to listen to it when “The Joker” caught the ear of one of the executives.

“Some kid said, ‘Hey I think that ‘Joker’s a hit single,’” Miller reports. “And I said, ‘I don’t care about hit singles anymore.’”

That’s when Miller gave them a list of cities he was going to be touring in and insisted that the label get albums in the stories in those cities. “I thought my career was over, I thought this was pretty much it,” he admits. But when he started playing the song live, it caught like wildfire at his shows. Miller knew he had something special when he was driving to a theatre gig in Oakland, California, and heard “The Joker” on four of the five radio stations he was scanning through. “‘The Joker’ was a song that saved my career,” he professed to Charlie Rose in 2016.

“The Joker” was known around the world, topping the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching the pinnacle position in Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA for sales of more than five million copies.

Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns