Song Of The Day 6/3/2013: Jody Miller - "Queen Of The House"

Answer Songs Week: The final entry in this week's onslaught of Hot Rhetorical Action comes from Jody Miller, whose talent as a country singer in the '60s and '70s is frustratingly underrated and overlooked these days. She started out with a strong folk influence, but got her first break with this straight 1965 answer song to "King Of the Road" by Roger Miller (no relation). "Queen Of the House" cracked the country music Top 10 and peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100.

And best of all, they made a gloriously sexist Scopitone film out of it. The Scopitone was sort of a music film jukebox that populated bars and lounges in the '60s, so the 16mm clips they showed were a precursor to music videos. You didn't find a lot of top-tier music superstars making Scopitone films, and since the machines originated in France a large proportion of those who did were French. Scopitone films with country singers were rarer still.

No matter what genre, anybody would have had a hard time topping this gleefully offensive Roger Sterling fever dream, a celebration of subjective women dancing enthusiastically with household appliances in skimpy lingerie while preserving their skills at voguing on the bed. It's like Solid Gold meets Stepford Wives on Serax. It would be another three years before Virginia Slims set our gals free.