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Where Dead Voices Gather
A forgotten singer from the early days of jazz is at the center of this riveting book -- a narrative that is part mystery, part biography, part meditation on the meaning and power of music.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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372 people want to read
About the author
Nick Tosches
53 books240 followersNick Tosches was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, was praised by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best rock and roll biography ever written."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
March 31, 2013
I finished Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick Tosches this afternoon. I had more issues with this text than any other by the deft stylist. I was reading deep into last night, when I took out Carter Family disc I bought myself recently and replaced it with an early Gilian Welch (my wife rose from her slumber and deadpanned, there she is again, my rival.) Tosches extends a nod, the gist of which is the cathartic of song has been with us eternally, like some airborne Dutchman, yet the idea of minstrelsy is being vilified by sentimentalists and academics who don't understand anything. I was not impressed. There may not be anything scientific about race as a designation, Tosches proudly points to research in that regard. There still is a concept of human history, and, no, no one alive withstood slavery. These arguments do not mean that this legacy and all its subsequent horror have not had an implacable effect upon people of color.
Tosches needs to cease his incessant blowing of Dylan as well. It isn't becoming. cheers.
Tosches needs to cease his incessant blowing of Dylan as well. It isn't becoming. cheers.
December 17, 2017
This book is ostensibly a biography of Emmett Miller, a blackface minstrel show performer whose "clarinet voice" inspired people like Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard. Those bits are fine, especially if you're obsessive about the dates of shows and recording sessions, which are meticulously documented. Much more interesting to me were Tosche's detours into obscure byways of American music and pop culture, the Homeric tradition, and even ancient Jewish mysticism. It's like having a few beers with a crazed genius whose mind keeps jumping from subject to subject, all of which he's an expert in. You sit there in awe, feeling lucky you stumbled into this bar on this particular day, and leave smarter than you were before on a fundamental level. I must have highlighted the titles to fifty songs I'd never heard and then tracked them down on Youtube. His vision of the "pranayama of holy theft," by which Virgil drew in the air that Homer breathed and Dante drew in Virgil's breath and so on all the way down to Emmett Miller and Lightnin' Hopkins and Bob Dylan is a beautiful way to look at the evolution and influence in art and one that will stick with me forever.
December 23, 2013
Tosches is a singular writer -- feisty, cerebral, surprising, curmudgeonly -- and this is a singular book, about his attempts to unearth the lost history of Emmett Miller, one of the last of the blackface minstrels, and a pioneer of yodeling in American popular song to boot. The roots of that music during this time period -- roughly the second and third decade of the 20th century -- are especially tangled, with the spread of recording technology meaning everyone can influence everyone else. But Tosches' obsessive detective story (which spans, for him, decades of searching) is compelling, and I love that this is a contemporary book of nonfiction that never once attempts to recreate a scene (let alone dialogue) from a past the author never witnessed (or heard). Rather, Tosches is rather like a personal essayist, swaying by the depth of his research, the intrigue of his rhetoric, and his sheer passion for music.
Want to read
January 20, 2012added because of this quote, found on a blog:
"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
December 31, 2021
This is not a good book, but it is a really interesting book.
When I first started listening to blues and folk music as a kid, authenticity was the most important thing. This was real music not commercial stuff. Tosches calls that bullshit. All American music is a melting pot of influences. The blues borrowed from minstrels shows and spirituals. The folk singers stole lyrics from the blues and from pop songs. It is all one stream.
This is, at one level, a biography of Emmett Miller. He was a white singer/comedian who started out performing in blackface in minstrel shows. He had a few fairly successful songs in 1928 and 29 and hung on at the edges of showbiz until his death in 1962.
Miller had a distinctive singing style which included yodeling and odd phrasing. He may or may not have influenced Jimmie Rodgers yodeling. He may or may not have influenced several other singers. Tosches is obsessed with him. He has spent years searching for every piece of newspaper story, document or record which mentions him. In the 1990s he interviewed everyone he could find who might have known Miller. Most of them were in their 90s and had completely unreliable memories.
Tosches does not learn much about Miller. There are no personal memories of what king f guy he was. No one seems to have known him well. The descriptions of his performances are mostly a sentence or two in a newspaper. We never get a good feel for the man.
The biography is about a quarter of the book. A second big part of the book is a history of minstrel shows in America. Miller had his taste of success just as the minstrel shows were dying. In the 1880s and 90s minstrel shows where the most popular entertainment in the country. Vaudeville supplanted the minstrel show. Radio and movies pushed them to the edge and the depression killed them. Tosches give a fairly detailed picture of the shows and their decline.
A third quarter of the book is a painfully detailed discussion of how particular songs were picked up and modified over the years. Tosches loves giving long lists of the different obscure artist who covered different obscure songs with dates, sidemen and record company name. Too much for me.
The fourth quarter is the theory. Tosches drags in classical literature, modern poetry and esoteric theories. Homer, Virgil and Ezra Pound make appearances. We get too many sentences like;
"It is that long, endlessly resonant bent theophanic and fatal blue note of a journey, that drifting and drifting, of that alone to the Alone, that defines what has come, in rill and in torrent, in the wake of the flood."
Most of the book is fascinating but disorganized. The fact that there are no chapter breaks is a clue.
He has strong opinions which he expresses clearly. He believes that Elvis made rock and roll into "a sterile and insipid Wonder Bread for the masses.". He believes that Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg were second rate "products of the Ivy League" and that "the one true writer of that age" was Hubert Selby Jr.
He goes over the edge at one point. He is discussing Ernest Hogan, an obscure black comedian from the 1890s who is notorious for writing the song "All Coons Look Alike to Me.". It became a much-recorded hit and Hogan later said he regretted writing it. Tosches than drops this, "In a later age Maya Angelou, a lesser writer than Hogan, was able to live down the disgrace of her 1957 album Miss Calypso, which included her composition "Mambo in Africa." Put aside the fact that the title of her song was not blatantly racist, the idea that Angelou is a "lesser writer" then a semi-anonymous writer of pop songs is whacky, at best.
This is one of those books that annoys, entertains, bores, confuses, informs and educates. I enjoyed the experience.
When I first started listening to blues and folk music as a kid, authenticity was the most important thing. This was real music not commercial stuff. Tosches calls that bullshit. All American music is a melting pot of influences. The blues borrowed from minstrels shows and spirituals. The folk singers stole lyrics from the blues and from pop songs. It is all one stream.
This is, at one level, a biography of Emmett Miller. He was a white singer/comedian who started out performing in blackface in minstrel shows. He had a few fairly successful songs in 1928 and 29 and hung on at the edges of showbiz until his death in 1962.
Miller had a distinctive singing style which included yodeling and odd phrasing. He may or may not have influenced Jimmie Rodgers yodeling. He may or may not have influenced several other singers. Tosches is obsessed with him. He has spent years searching for every piece of newspaper story, document or record which mentions him. In the 1990s he interviewed everyone he could find who might have known Miller. Most of them were in their 90s and had completely unreliable memories.
Tosches does not learn much about Miller. There are no personal memories of what king f guy he was. No one seems to have known him well. The descriptions of his performances are mostly a sentence or two in a newspaper. We never get a good feel for the man.
The biography is about a quarter of the book. A second big part of the book is a history of minstrel shows in America. Miller had his taste of success just as the minstrel shows were dying. In the 1880s and 90s minstrel shows where the most popular entertainment in the country. Vaudeville supplanted the minstrel show. Radio and movies pushed them to the edge and the depression killed them. Tosches give a fairly detailed picture of the shows and their decline.
A third quarter of the book is a painfully detailed discussion of how particular songs were picked up and modified over the years. Tosches loves giving long lists of the different obscure artist who covered different obscure songs with dates, sidemen and record company name. Too much for me.
The fourth quarter is the theory. Tosches drags in classical literature, modern poetry and esoteric theories. Homer, Virgil and Ezra Pound make appearances. We get too many sentences like;
"It is that long, endlessly resonant bent theophanic and fatal blue note of a journey, that drifting and drifting, of that alone to the Alone, that defines what has come, in rill and in torrent, in the wake of the flood."
Most of the book is fascinating but disorganized. The fact that there are no chapter breaks is a clue.
He has strong opinions which he expresses clearly. He believes that Elvis made rock and roll into "a sterile and insipid Wonder Bread for the masses.". He believes that Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg were second rate "products of the Ivy League" and that "the one true writer of that age" was Hubert Selby Jr.
He goes over the edge at one point. He is discussing Ernest Hogan, an obscure black comedian from the 1890s who is notorious for writing the song "All Coons Look Alike to Me.". It became a much-recorded hit and Hogan later said he regretted writing it. Tosches than drops this, "In a later age Maya Angelou, a lesser writer than Hogan, was able to live down the disgrace of her 1957 album Miss Calypso, which included her composition "Mambo in Africa." Put aside the fact that the title of her song was not blatantly racist, the idea that Angelou is a "lesser writer" then a semi-anonymous writer of pop songs is whacky, at best.
This is one of those books that annoys, entertains, bores, confuses, informs and educates. I enjoyed the experience.
December 4, 2016
Not that I particularly care, but this is a 3.5-star book if there ever was one.
I find Tosches really frustrating. Hellfire is just jaw-droppingly good on every level, and seems all the more impressive the more of Tosches' other work I read. Where Dead Voices Gather is, I think, mostly excellent, and a really timely read in these days where "cultural appropriation" is so frequently derided by people who simultaneously claim to prize and desire "diversity."
This is, uh, not to suggest that blackface minstrelsy shouldn't maybe be examined and troubled over -- just that this particular issue of black and white is, y'know, pretty complex, which is all the more reason to give it some time and attention.
Tosches digs into this complexity throughout the book using his usual methods -- detective work, linguistic flights, and lists, oh so many lists -- and although it's harder than it ought to be to tease some structure out of the book, I do think he develops a solid sense of momentum for most of it, weaving the book's purported biographical subject matter (the life and career of Emmett Miller) together with as much relevant and often enjoyably tangential matter (the times of Emmett Miller, I suppose) until what we seem to have is a panorama of the social, cultural, commercial, and (yes) racial forces that came together to create and destroy blackface minstrelsy and Emmett Miller himself.
Unfortunately, somewhere around page 200, the book started to feel increasingly shapeless to me, a bit too free-associative, a little repetitive... and yet, somehow, not exactly a slog. It wasn't bad at all, but it meandered and petered out at just the point when I felt like it should've been coming together and cresting.
I remain convinced that Nick Tosches is a splendid prose writer; anyone who's capable of writing a book like Hellfire has something going for them. But I'm also kind of glad that Country is the only other book of his that I feel like I need to read.
I find Tosches really frustrating. Hellfire is just jaw-droppingly good on every level, and seems all the more impressive the more of Tosches' other work I read. Where Dead Voices Gather is, I think, mostly excellent, and a really timely read in these days where "cultural appropriation" is so frequently derided by people who simultaneously claim to prize and desire "diversity."
This is, uh, not to suggest that blackface minstrelsy shouldn't maybe be examined and troubled over -- just that this particular issue of black and white is, y'know, pretty complex, which is all the more reason to give it some time and attention.
Tosches digs into this complexity throughout the book using his usual methods -- detective work, linguistic flights, and lists, oh so many lists -- and although it's harder than it ought to be to tease some structure out of the book, I do think he develops a solid sense of momentum for most of it, weaving the book's purported biographical subject matter (the life and career of Emmett Miller) together with as much relevant and often enjoyably tangential matter (the times of Emmett Miller, I suppose) until what we seem to have is a panorama of the social, cultural, commercial, and (yes) racial forces that came together to create and destroy blackface minstrelsy and Emmett Miller himself.
Unfortunately, somewhere around page 200, the book started to feel increasingly shapeless to me, a bit too free-associative, a little repetitive... and yet, somehow, not exactly a slog. It wasn't bad at all, but it meandered and petered out at just the point when I felt like it should've been coming together and cresting.
I remain convinced that Nick Tosches is a splendid prose writer; anyone who's capable of writing a book like Hellfire has something going for them. But I'm also kind of glad that Country is the only other book of his that I feel like I need to read.
August 25, 2017
As the conversation around cultural appropriation and race in America continues, this book is becoming even more relevant. As expected, Tosches makes unexpected cultural connections and comes to sometimes shocking conclusions. Personally, I found that I had to put my politics and preconceived notions aside and take it all in before I could process the ideas and history presented (some of which I'm still not on board with, but feel a deeper understanding for having them presented so compellingly). Overall, this is an amazing piece of work and essential to a larger conversation that goes far beyond any pretext of this book being a biography of Emmett Miller. Whether you're inspired or offended (or both) by its tone and assertions, the depth of research and presentation of the arguments are valuable pieces of the very complex puzzle in any debate around race and culture in America.
As for the negatives/disclaimers, the book can be jarring at times, switching abruptly from Tosches' gorgeous piss n' vinegar verbal flights to cold pages of endless facts and academic detail. Tosches also has a habit of casually dropping references only a scholar could catch and even resorting Greek words (written, of course, IN Greek), which is a bit tiresome after a while. The musical references also seemed both limited and forced at times (Dylan, Jerry Lee, Dylan, Stones, Dylan, Dylan, and Jerry Lee, plus a lot of Luther Dickinson, whose album just doesn't live up to the number of call-outs it gets here).
As for the negatives/disclaimers, the book can be jarring at times, switching abruptly from Tosches' gorgeous piss n' vinegar verbal flights to cold pages of endless facts and academic detail. Tosches also has a habit of casually dropping references only a scholar could catch and even resorting Greek words (written, of course, IN Greek), which is a bit tiresome after a while. The musical references also seemed both limited and forced at times (Dylan, Jerry Lee, Dylan, Stones, Dylan, Dylan, and Jerry Lee, plus a lot of Luther Dickinson, whose album just doesn't live up to the number of call-outs it gets here).
July 7, 2017
If you are looking for a pool of historical materials on jazz and blues, this book has a lot!
This also introduces me to Emmet Miller, an unsung hero. A rockstar of his time.
This also introduces me to Emmet Miller, an unsung hero. A rockstar of his time.
May 29, 2018
Incredible, disturbing dive into the dark history of American music.
December 27, 2025
Quite interesting but also quite a slog and ultimately unsatisfying
April 29, 2024
I have only read a few books by Nick Tosches, and this was one of the strangest. As a subject, the study of minstrel music is somewhat niche; even today, trying to analyze the implications of blackface and racial mimicry (or denigration) have a different role in scholarship that I’m not entirely sure that Tosches was pursuing at the time of this book. However, I think that through his study of the career of Emmitt Miller and minstrel music in general, he begins to interrogate some of these issues of racism and identity in minstrel music. Even more interesting is the kind of obsession with which Tosches pursues this subject, especially Emmitt Miller, who he questions whether he really existed or if he had some other identity or was a kind of combination of other performers. In this book, Tosches traces the history of minstrel music, exploring how it moved from live performances and shows, to eventual recordings, which seems ot have brought about its demise, although performers like Miller still toured and performed. Tosches tries to find evidence of Miller and what happened to him, while also tracing the arc of his career as a minstrel singer. I found this to be incredibly interesting and important to learn about. Despite being a pretense in performance, minstrel music helped to popularize and gospel, field hollers, blues and eventually jazz, making these musical styles more popular with a wider, record buying audience, and eventually paving the way for Black performers to gain more recognition, and phasing out white performers who relied on burnt cork. At times, the book became a little repetitive, and seemed like Toshes expanded a shorter piece or article for this book; however, I was really impressed with his ability to pursue a personal passion and intriguing mystery for him into something this large scale and complex. Furthermore, he raises important issues about representation, authenticity, and appropriation. This is probably not a book for casual music lovers, but rather for readers interested in learning more about the roots of popular music and how race, identity, recording and performing all factored into creating a wider exposure for blues, jazz, country and eventually rock music
May 27, 2009
Nick runs down names and places, labels and producers, songs and dances, etc. to the point that sections of the book bring to mind the Iliad's catalog of the ships. These sections are valuable as reference though, and worth the slog for the insights (e.g. his criticism of the white demand for "authentic" blues/suffering; his digressions about modern forms of minstrelsy; the unfathomable depths of origins; his surfeit of creative and poetic juxtapositions; etc.) and the occasional maniacal bursts of ostentatious prose:
"...1927: the year that Furry Lewis, Jimmie Rodgers, and so many other luminous voices came to be heard; the year of Emmett Miller's glory; the year that the great flood of the Mississippi, the great flood of the Delta, the great flood, ignivomous and exundant, which seemed to sunder the chthonic sacrarium, Κτύπησε Ζευς χθόυιος, and bring forth the tombaroli, the holy grave-robbers and thieves; to loose the cestus of Mystis, sweet tectonic mama, and raise, in skirl and sigh and yodel and moan, in epiclesis, in aestus, in quietus - stile vecchio, stile duro, stile nuovo - the tessitura of it all, the dark and myriad-voiced antediluvian song and resurrection in the light of new mornin, matutina lux, Viva-tonal and electric, wild-souled and endlessly rocking."
This book is all at once deeply felt, obsessive, single-minded, boring, and brilliant.
"...1927: the year that Furry Lewis, Jimmie Rodgers, and so many other luminous voices came to be heard; the year of Emmett Miller's glory; the year that the great flood of the Mississippi, the great flood of the Delta, the great flood, ignivomous and exundant, which seemed to sunder the chthonic sacrarium, Κτύπησε Ζευς χθόυιος, and bring forth the tombaroli, the holy grave-robbers and thieves; to loose the cestus of Mystis, sweet tectonic mama, and raise, in skirl and sigh and yodel and moan, in epiclesis, in aestus, in quietus - stile vecchio, stile duro, stile nuovo - the tessitura of it all, the dark and myriad-voiced antediluvian song and resurrection in the light of new mornin, matutina lux, Viva-tonal and electric, wild-souled and endlessly rocking."
This book is all at once deeply felt, obsessive, single-minded, boring, and brilliant.
September 14, 2013
I have never seen a man with such a strong capability to go off topic, or despise Elvis Presley so thoroughly. Nick Tosches is an intelligent man who can discuss some very interesting topics. Unfortunately his ability to remember where his argument is going is about as good as a senile old geezer. I really loved the book at first, but Tosches really slows down when he starts rambling in the middle. It's quite painful from then on. He clearly has his obsessions, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, James Luther Dickinson, etc. His biting hatred for Elvis left a noisome taste in my mouth, and it is humorous to me that he could so illogically abhor a man whom Bob Dylan almost worships. There is a photo of Dylan on his hands and knees kissing the spot where Elvis recorded "That's All Right Mama", the moment Tosches deems the death of good rock music. None of his arguments against the King are sensible and are clearly fueled by his pretentiousness (as if the rock n' roll surrounding Elvis was anymore real or not real). That whole thing just made me upset. So overall, it's an ok book that made some observations I fully enjoyed, and others I wanted to tear out of the book and burn.
January 28, 2012
Stayed away from this one for a bit because I was admittedly all, "Eh, minstrelsy...really? Just not really my thing." But, in typical Tosches fashion, this book was informative as all get-out and full of his patented music-history-acrobatic-act where he'll take a popular song and trace its roots back to some bawdy, 17th century ditty. Structurally, it's all over the place—which the author addresses several times—so it's more "history if it were written as a Faulkner novel." Far out stuff any way you cut it which all ultimately underscores how mind numbingly intertwined all forms of art and expression are: from the progression of minstrelsy can be seen all things from country to the blues to rockabilly to rock to Dylan and all that jazz.
September 27, 2023
“Lightnin’ Hopkins’s nasty, sidewise ‘I saw you ridin’ around, you was ridin’ around in your brand-new automobile,’ from his wry, lie-down-hip 1949 ‘Automobile,’ somehow becomes, in 1966, Bob Dylan’s nasty, sidewise ‘well, I see you got your brand-new leopard-skin pill-box hat.’ Some people are so cool, so lie-down hip, that they can steal the right breezes simply by breathing: the pranayama of holy theft, the pranayama through which Virgil drew into himself the air that Homer breathed, and through which Dante drew Virgil’s…Inhale one vision, exhale another. To steal consciously is the way of art and of craft. To steal through breath is the way of wisdom and of art that transcends”
June 30, 2009
The tale of Georgia-native minstrel singer Emmett Miller done in that distinctly Tosches way. Fascinating story that gives a good history of mistrelsy, a bit of vaudeville and makes the argument why minstrelsy is no more to be abhorred than it's later cousins. In fact, it's when the black face came off that things truly became bad.
Miller's distinctive voice influenced Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and many others. The musical style bridged gaps between country, blues, jazz etc. hinting at the coming of Western Swing music.
Still hoping to make it to Miller's grave in Macon.
Miller's distinctive voice influenced Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and many others. The musical style bridged gaps between country, blues, jazz etc. hinting at the coming of Western Swing music.
Still hoping to make it to Miller's grave in Macon.
August 26, 2013
I've read plenty of minstrel history studies, some of which the author savages in the first few pages. What is this? A discography with narration of a crazy quilt of everything from blues, hokum, hillbilly music, and jazz. Congrats to the author who can listen to a lot of records and review old newspaper files. And the alleged subject Emmett Miller? An obscure legend to some - an opportunistic chameleon to others. As a blues fan who's read every book from Charters to Palmer and more, this book is bunk.
January 4, 2011
Blackface minstrelsy would seem to be a delicate topic all these years after its demise, but not for Nick Tosches. He bounces back and forth between the two cultures that built this entertainment form, for decades the most popular performance diversion in the U.S. Whites took from blacks, blacks took from whites, whites took it back again. And so on. A fascinating story that only occasionally gets uncomfortable.
December 22, 2009
haven't quite finished this. heavy on historical/discographical info, moments of jaw-dropping lyricism interspersed among the lengthy informational chunks. a worthwhile read for anyone fascinated by the history of the recording industry/pre-war music/minstrelsy/vaudeville/the sea of influence/yadda yadda
December 28, 2009
The musical history is fascinating, and the book goes so deep that feels like an alternate history laid over our own. But Tosches writes with a chip on his shoulder, daring you to care enough about his subject to be worthy of reading his book, and the self-congratulatory asides and rather bitter sprigs of autobiography spoil the flavor.
December 14, 2008
Starts as a bunch of names and dates with vague descriptions of their contribution to musical history.
Exploring a whole segment of music I wasn't aware of, 'black face'.
Slowly becoming awesome and hick.
But then reverts to names and dates. I don't get it; occasional savory details for sure, but I ain't gunna eat gravel for a chance to lick steak.
Exploring a whole segment of music I wasn't aware of, 'black face'.
Slowly becoming awesome and hick.
But then reverts to names and dates. I don't get it; occasional savory details for sure, but I ain't gunna eat gravel for a chance to lick steak.
March 25, 2011
Ostensibly a biography of the long-lost and -forgotten black-face minstrel-turned-jazz singer Emmett Miller, it is a brilliant rumination on mortality and immortality, hidden cultural transmission and mythology. No other writer that I am aware of could so convincingly compare American folk music to Ovid, which Tosches does more than once.
March 28, 2016
This was a fascinating read, taking a deep dive into the the roots and legacy of minstrel music. It's a thorny issue, since it gets into aspects of American history that people are often cagey about, and Tosches has a way of picking his battles that I don't always agree with, but it invites tons of discussion, and it's a topic well worth discussing.
July 5, 2007
A really well written (must check out more of Tosches work) about the life of Emmett Miller and more so the history of minstrel men and subsequently the history of American music. I always though Hank Williams wrote Lovesick Blues. Who knew Emmett was his "daddy".
April 1, 2020
my 2nd read of this one (1st was in 2003), this time taking notes! the best music history book i've ever read. somehow connects rock & roll to homer most convincingly. it's important to hear some emmett miller first, though.
April 1, 2015
The topic is at once appalling and enthralling and the writing is usually excellent but it sometimes falls into the territory of just listing researched facts for the purpose collecting them in one place. That is valid, but not always entertaining.
August 11, 2007
Where is Corey Stevens and why can't I get him to return my Emmett Miller CD?
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December 17, 2007The best book on modern music I've ever read. (He's wrong about the paucity of black people in Britain pre. the 1950s).
December 30, 2007
A very moving story about a forgotten life. A life that was essentially over long before death.
May 11, 2010
really really good... although a bit of slog to get through
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews