Steve Miller Band – The Joker

The Joker is a song by the Steve Miller Band from their 1973 album The Joker. Released as a single in October 1973, the song topped the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1974 and reached the top 20 in Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. More than 16 years later, in September 1990,

The line in this song, “I speak of the pompatus of love,” has baffled listeners for some time. Greil Marcus provided the best explanation we’ve seen in a 2002 article for Los Angeles Magazine titled “In The Secret Country.” The word “Pompatus” does exist in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it means “to act with pomp and splendor.” Miller most likely heard the word on a song called “The Letter,” which was recorded by the Los Angeles doo-wop group The Medallions in 1954. It was written by their lead singer Vernon Green, who was 16 at the time and crippled with polio. The song contains these lyrics:

Let me whisper sweet words of dismortality
and discuss the pompatus of love
Put it together and what do you have?
Matrimony

The line “I’m a midnight toker” is a marijuana reference (as is the “toke” in Brewer & Shipley’s hit “One Toke Over The Line” from 1970). Many stoners related to this song, and in 2012, Spin magazine named it the most commercially successful pot song of all time.

This finally hit #1 on the UK chart in 1990, thanks to its inclusion in a Levi’s jeans commercial. In the spot, a guy rides a motorcycle into an office building and rolls up to an attractive worker, who puts on a pair of 501s and gets on the back of his bike as he takes her away.

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