Editing Pompatus (section)

==Lyrics==
The lyrics of "The Joker" include the quatrain:
:Some people call me the space cowboy.
:Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love.
:Some people call me Maurice,
:'Cause I speak of the pompatus of love.

Each line references a track on a previous Miller album: "Space Cowboy" on ''[[Brave New World (Steve Miller Band album)|Brave New World]]'' (1969); "[[Gangster of Love]]" on ''[[Sailor (Steve Miller Band album)|Sailor]]'' (1968); and "Enter Maurice" on ''[[Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden]]'' (1972), which includes the lines:<ref name=dope/>
: My dearest darling, come closer to Maurice
: so I can whisper sweet words of epismetology
: in your ear and speak to you of the pompatus of love.

Although Miller claims he invented the words "epismetology" (a [[Metathesis (linguistics)|metathesis]] of the word [[epistemology]]) and "pompatus", both are variants of words which Miller most likely heard in a song by [[Vernon Green]] called "The Letter," which was recorded by the Los Angeles doo-wop group [[Medallions band|The Medallions]] in 1954.

Green's "The Letter" as performed by the Medallions had the lines:<ref name=dope/>
: Oh my darling, let me whisper
: sweet words of ''pizmotality''
: and discuss the ''puppetutes'' of love.

Green describes the lyrics as a description of his dream woman.<ref name=dope/> "''Pizmotality'' described words of such secrecy that they could only be spoken to the one you loved", Green explained. He coined the term ''puppetutes'' "to mean a secret paper-doll fantasy figure who would be my everything and bear my children".<ref name=dope/>

In 2019, Miller appeared on ''[[The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon]]'' and explained that the word "pompatus" came from "an old [[doo-wop]] song" that included a term he misunderstood as "pompatus", and said that for years he did not know what it meant whenever someone asked him about it.<ref>{{cite video |title=Steve Miller Reveals How He Made Up "Pompatus" |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLKNFdOv1o |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/SMLKNFdOv1o| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|publisher=The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon |date=October 10, 2019}}{{cbignore}}</ref>