Mrs. Miller - My Love, Sweet Pea, Monday, Monday, Yellow Submarine, A Hard Day’s Night, and These Boots Are Made For Walkin’

Elva Ruby Connes Miller should provide hope to us all. This Missouri-born housewife apparently convinced herself and some select few record executives that she possessed a wonderful singing voice and some genuine musical talent and appeal. And not just any record executives—Capitol Records executives, the home of Frank Sinatra and the Beatles, among others. Over the course of a handful of LPs, Mrs. Miller took on anything thrown at her: Bossa Nova, standards, show tunes, and of course covers of popular tunes of the day, like the selections here. While the Beatles covers are priceless, one has to wonder what the pitch-perfect backing singers on “Monday, Monday” made of this musical wrecking ball they had been hired to coo behind. “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” shows that the Mrs. could be just as sexy and sassy as the next girl. My personal favorite is her rendition of “My Love,” where the wordy chorus proves too much for our heroine to keep up with (or keep in time with), but she gives it the old college try regardless.

Among Mrs. Miller’s other career highlights, aside from coast-to-coast radio airplay and an inexplicable popularity: appearing onstage at the Hollywood Bowl, a handful of films (and if any of you have one, please share!), and a 1967 trip to Vietnam to entertain the troops. I can only picture the looks on their faces—if she sounds this good in the recording studio, just imagine what she was like in person to our entertainment (and sex) starved men in uniform.