Joseph Miller

A Life in Music and Film

Ronald Joseph Miller played saxophone for Ike & Tina Turner, spent fifty years as Herbie Hancock's friend and next-door neighbor, sold fine Italian fragrance out of Prague, and then — at seventy, when most people are winding down — hung up his real estate coat for good and became a working actor.

He was born on October 12, 1946, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Paul and Cindy Miller. The family moved to Pleasant Hill, Illinois, and took up farming; when a baby sister arrived three years later they relocated to Pittsfield, and in 1952 they opened Miller's Furniture on the square.

He went to East School and Higbee, and graduated from Pittsfield High in 1964. He played saxophone in the band and was its drum major. He was the mascot for the PHS football team. He was in Bye Bye Birdie and The Pajama Game. He played in two bands, one of them the Tempests, who worked their way around the county. He was an Eagle Scout. Everything he would later be, he was already doing by the age of eighteen.

He studied first at Bradley University in Peoria, then finished his bachelor's degree at Illinois College in Jacksonville. Then he went to Los Angeles and took a job touring with Ike and Tina Turner, playing saxophone — and afterward went back for a Theatre Arts degree at UCLA. He joined an acting troupe that spent a summer touring Europe, and there he met Jennifer Beneke. They married on October 9, 1971.

They tried Northern California, but acting and music pulled too hard and they came back to Los Angeles. Joe split himself between his dreams and the rent, working as a realtor and in property development. House-hunting one day, the listing agent mentioned offhand that the neighbors next door were the Hancocks. That sealed it. What followed was a friendship and collaboration with Herbie Hancock that lasted more than fifty years. Joe used to talk about sitting in his back garden listening to Herbie compose some of his major works through the open windows. Herbie also introduced him to Nichiren Buddhism, which he practiced from the early seventies for the rest of his life.

The marriage ended in 1994. He moved to Prague and joined his sister and her husband importing fine fragrances and cosmetics, and later the two of them came back to California and founded Es'Scents International, bringing in Rance fragrances from Italy. It was during that stretch that he joined a local theatre group in Lafayette and the bug bit him again. Los Angeles called him home.

This is when he became Joseph.

For a while he still propped up the acting with real estate and property management. Then he turned seventy, hung up the real estate coat, and gave himself entirely to acting and music. In his first two years he was cast in more than two hundred projects — fifty-one of them credited on IMDb, the rest the kind of independent and student work that never gets an entry. In November 2025, Who Knows Oscar the Clown, starring Joseph, won Best Inspirational Film at the Cannes World Film Festival.

Though what he actually loved telling people was that he was the voice of Marcus the Worm on TikTok.

He loved karaoke. He never stopped writing and composing, and most of that music can still be heard and bought online.

Following a twenty-year relationship with Elena Gulyacoubian, his daughter Nicole Miller was born. Nicole was born with Aicardi syndrome and has been hospitalized essentially since birth.

You were and always will be a pure soul. I will always be grateful for the empathy and respect you always showed my child and I. Your voice will live forever thanks to your art. You will live forever in my heart. — left at his door

Biography as told by Sharon Kalvoda, July 2026.

Amazing Grace

A recording that was special to Joseph.

More of his own compositions can be heard and bought on Broadjam.