One last Steve Miller-related post here and then I’ll fly like an eagle onto something else.
When Steve did The Joker in concert the other night and sang the “Some people call me Maurice because I speak…..” line I mentally sang along “of the properness of love.”
However, the way Steve sang it and the way I heard it, I realized that it wasn’t properness that he was singing. Thus, it made me wonder what he really was singing about.
Turns out that after all these years I have had it incorrect in that the lyric he sings is actually “the pompitous of love.” My first though was what the hell is pompitous? My second thought was “And here I thought “properness of love” didn’t make much sense!”)
So just because these sort of time wasters tend to amuse me more than they should, I noodled around the net some and I found this interview with Steve conducted by none other than Dan Rather who also asks him “What IS the pompitous of love?” (click here and scroll down to video interview.) Songfacts also provides some good insights about the origins of the term (click here.)
It led me back to the referenced 1954 song The Letter by the Medallions where “pompatus” or something like it is sung at the 1:50 mark.) This comment was made about the lyric.
 |