Where dead voices gather

Only Nick Tosches, best-selling author of Dino and The Devil and Sonny Liston, could have woven this irresistible tale: part mystery, part biography, part meditation on the meaning and power of music. A forgotten singer from the early days of jazz is at the centre of this riveting narrative. For twenty 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 twentieth century. Beginning with a handful of 78-rpm records and ending at a tombstone in a Macon, 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. This is a brilliant, inspired journey by one of the most original writers at work today.