Frank can you offer anymore info about that Miller fellow and his song? Here's the thing, there was an entertainer from here in the Pacific Northwest, Jim Lewis, Texas Jim Lewis, or Sheriff Tex as he became known around these parts. He was widely known, having recorded with a great many other Country folks back in the day. I've heard that he claimed authorship of the word Hootenanny. He also recorded a song called, Hootenanny Annie. It was written about his rather fanciful washboard gizmo by the same name. I have a copy on 78rpm. I understand that he spent a good deal of time, energy and funds trying to sue Hootenanny, the TV program, because he felt that they profited from the use of a word that he popularized and trademarked via his gizmo and recording.

I just tried to Google search the titles of the song you mentioned and the only post that aapeared brought me back to your post on this thread. Wikipedia has some interesting backup for the good Sheriff's claim.

"Hootenanny was used in the early twentieth century to refer to things whose names were forgotten or unknown. In this usage it was synonymous with thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in "hand me that hootenanny." Hootenanny was also an old country word for "party". Now, most commonly, it refers to a folk-music party.

According to Pete Seeger, in various interviews, he first heard the word hootenanny in Seattle, Washington in the late 1940s."

It's this second reference that states that Pete first heard the word while in the Seattle area that makes me think that Jim's claim has a certain validity. Jim lived here in the Northwest for years and would have most likely been the source of the use of the word in this area. Having recorded a song with that word in the title, a song about playing music with his Hootenanny, no doubt he surely must have used this song as something of a theme song as he became very well known for his performances with Hootenanny Annie here in the Northwest. He even had an early TV program as a children's entertainer. I can certainly understand why he felt as though the folks from the folk music show Hootenanny could have coopted the word from him.