Rod Stewart once paid a beautiful tribute to Frankie Miller, an acknowledgment from one great singer to another. “He’s the only white guy that’s ever brought a tear to my eye,” Rod said. “He was that good.”
It’s a long time since Frankie Miller has been able to sing. That wonderfully soulful, gritty voice was lost for ever when he suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm in 1994. But Miller always considered himself lucky to have survived it, and what remains is a rich legacy in the albums he made in his pomp in the 70s and early 80s.
Born Francis John Miller in 1949 in Bridgeton, an impoverished district of Glasgow, his education in music came via the rhythm-and-blues classics in his mother’s record collection. After stints with various local groups, and a brief spell in a band named Jude that also included guitarist Robin Trower, Miller struck out as a solo artist in 1972, and over the course of that decade he
