WHERE DEAD VOICES GATHER

A forgotten singer from the early days of jazz is at the centre of this biography. For 20 years, Nick Tosches searched for facts about the life of Emmett Miller, a yodelling blackface performer whose songs prefigured jazz, country, blues and much of the popular music of the 20th century. Beginning with a handful of 78-rpm records and ending at a tombstone in a Georgia graveyard, Tosches pieces together a life - and illuminates the spirit of music makers from Cab Calloway to Bob Dylan, from Homer to the Rolling Stones.