Customer Reviews

Where Dead Voices Gather

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We all have our obsessions that can lead to our downfalls. Our Moby Dicks. Our black pearls. For Nick Tosches, that obsession over the past quarter-century has been Emmett Miller, a now-obscure minstrel singer from Georgia who recorded for OkeH and Victor in the '20s and '30s. When Tosches first wrote about Miller in the mid-'70s (in his book "Country"), little was known of Miller. No photographs of the man were known to have survived, little biographical information existed, and his music was difficult to find in print. Over the course of the next 26 years, Tosches and a few associates tracked down leads and rumors about Miller's origins, until a somewhat better picture of the man started to emerge during the '90s. A few photographs turned up eventually. His grave was found in a bad section of Macon, Georgia. And one by one a scant few people who had known Miller or had worked with him turned up with hazy, somewhat unreliable tales of his career. Which raises the question of why Tosches would spend so much time and energy chasing after the ghost of an obscure singer who had died - alcoholic and penniless - in 1962? Part of the answer is that Miller was a truly gifted vocalist whose unique style influenced the likes of Bob Wills, Tommy Duncan, Leon Redbone, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and others. Part of the answer is also that Miller's music is nearly uncategorizable; his unusual vocal style made a strong impression on country singers in years to come, but his music wasn't country by any stretch. In fact, with backing on his records by the likes of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, guitarist Eddie Lang, and drummer Gene Krupa, Miller was rubbing shoulders with some of the best jazz musicians of the era. Finally, Miller's career took place during the final years of minstrelsy (the history of which Tosches devotes musch space here), and Miller represented a last flickering spark in the embers of blackface musical comedy before dying completely during the Great Depression. Ultimately, Tosches' quest was only partially successful at best. We get a picture of the major events of Miller's life; his birth, the essentials of his career, his marriage (late in life), and his death. But of the man himself only dim hints; brief glances at the contents of a room in the split second after a light bulb flashes, then burns out. Gaps of knowledge still exist, as Tosches freely admits, but he's followed the trail as far as he thinks he can and leaves it now to younger scholars. A consistently fine work, in the now-well-established Tosches style. If one complaint can be made, it's that photographs of Miller and the book's other subjects might have been included. But perhaps it's for the best that none are present. Pictures of Miller aren't all that hard to find at this point - they're out there if you know where to look - and if anything the lack of photographs lends to the ghost-like portait of Miller that Tosches paints.

.... But not. When he's writing about Emmett Miller and the history of minstrelsy, he's brilliant. Not only did he do a ton of original research on Miller and minstrelsy and early American music (blues, jazz and country, before any of those three were genres; even the categories are foreign to us today), but he can tie it into modern musical ideas like no one else. He makes these shadows come alive for a minute, which is amazing; you can almost smell Miller in the room. And his exploration of these roots pulls together many previously ungathered threads.

However, he goes off the deep end, as usual for Tosches. Too many Ezra Pound discursions, for starters. If you're trying to impress us with your deep knowledge of foreign languages, you'd best not quote extensively from that old fraud, who "translated" buttloads of poetry from languages he couldn't read (with "help"); this taints Tosches with the suspicion of similar overreaching. It's great that he has read up on Greek word roots, but these links are too tenuous; it's a little bit of showing off and doesn't really illuminate anything. If he wants to write another book carrying his musical history ideas back from English ballads to ancient Greece, go for it, but here it just looks like dressing-up time. Stick to the blues.

And though Tosches is a great critic of the pop music of his time, like all of his contemporaries in that game (Meltzer, Marcus, ad infinitum) he's every bit as stuck in a particular rut as those he would criticize. He's quoting Iggy Pop and Patti Smith again, folks.

But while those complaints are serious, they don't detract from the fundamental brilliance of the story. It's a terrific, if languid, detective story, as well as an opening into a new world of understanding popular music. Tosches is the only "rock" critic ever who could have written it, which is a pity. I don't see how you can understand where our music came from without this book. Read it.

Nick Tosches brought Emmett Miller onto the stage of writing about American popular music about 20 years ago in his magic-realistist imagined chapters on Emmett Miller in his original edition of Country Music about 20 years ago. At the time, his comments were imaginary because we knew so little about Miller. As Tosches wrote, for all we knew then he could be running a candy store in Jersy City.

Over those twenty years Tosches found out about Miller and records a lot of that information in this book. This is great selfless work by Tosches and by other scholars who were inspired by his work and by Miller's music.

Well, this is not fiction, this is what we know about him, about minstrelry, about his life. You can't blame Nick for the fact that the truth is a bit less colorful and still less filled in than fiction.

Also, Tosches is no academic and does not pretend to be. He's music's best and most literary representative of the new journalism.

Miller is important. He was good. His music sounds great today. If you don't think so, you need your ears adjusted, your sense of life, love, and joy revived. He may not have been a financial success, but critical trend setters, particularly in Country Music, have styled themselves after him to this day.

Bob Wills--another former blackface perform-- combined Emmett Miller, the blues of the MIssissippi Sheiks, La Musica Ranchera, and ranch dance music into Western Swing. Wills auditioned his singers throughout his career by asking them to sing Miller's hits and comparing them to Miller. Wills recorded songs identified with Miller throughout his career.

Hank William's biggest success was essentially an imitation of an imitation of Miller. Merle Haggard has acknowledged his heritage by recording a Miller tribute album and usually does a Miller-Wills number during every concert. Leon Redbone gets a very large amount of his singing style and personna from Miller.

The problem of minstrelry can't be discussed without discussing race and culture in America in a way most people can't discuss it, like it is a real problem that is really there and part of the discoursde, win or lose. I don't exactly agree with Tosches' take on the problem, but, at least, he approaches the issue honestly and put it in the center of the discourse where it
belongs.

Perhaps, unlike Tosches' Country Music and Hellfire, this is not a book that belongs in every home, every school, every library, every bookstore, but it belongs on every bookshelf of anyone interest in American popular music, especially country music and Western Swing.

Nick Toches has written a loving, rigorous and MAJOR history of music in America. One other reviewer in these pages writes that he feels the author was bored by the time he wrote this information down. For this reader at least, NOTHING could be further than the truth. Toches shows us that his compendious heart and brain are not satisfied by anything less than EVERYTHING.It's a book about human memory and the hunger to set the facts and liner-notes straight by reaching out to touch the men and women who once lived by their music. Toches' hunger is ravenous and overwhelming. As the poet Jonathan Williams has written: GET HOT OR GET OUT! To read this book you need patience, the patience to love the richness of all the twistings and turnings, the hidden connections, the links of these songs and their singers with our own times. If you want to know about histories of the Blues links to Minstrel singers and Country and Rock and the age of Crooners...and...
You'd like to walk with the Devil but God Bless You Mr Toches for bringing back a world.
A Stunning Achievement.

If you read only one book about Emmett Miller, make it this one.

finding stuff on emmett miller is very hard
i bought The Minstrel Man from Georgia and fell in love with his voice right away and emotion behind it thank you for providing info behind the voice and the man, i am far from a racist and anybody who claims emmett was a racist is covering up their own problems.
this book is perfect for anybody who likes roots and blues and early country wish there were pictures though

Emmett Miller's name has been whispered in hallowed tones for years in serious music circles. He is a true source point for the "blue yodel' so populorized by Hank Williams and countless others which came in his wake. This book delivers the goods with style and sincerity. Buy It! Also, get the cd of Emmet's outstanding work. it's really something to yodel about.

A wonderful examination not only of the life and career of an obscure minstrel-show performer, but a wildly entertaining exegesis on the whole of American show business, especially the routes in which ideas are passed down from generation to generation, transmuting all along the way. You'll never think of minstrelsy quite the same way again. If you read this book carefully and well, you will realize that blackface performances were more than just public displays of hate, as the current popular thinking would have it. It could not have been the dominant form of entertainment for the better part of a century if it were nothing more than an avenue for racist expression. Minstrelsy, in fact, became the first area of entrance for blacks into mainstream popular entertainment. But, as I mentioned before, the book is about a lot more than that---more than this review can contain. If you are interested in music, show business, language, history, ANYTHING---buy and savor this fine piece of work.

There are books that I really like, and then there are books that affect me. This is one of those rare books that hit me where I live. While some reviewers were troubled by Tosches' rambling style, I was smitten with it. I eagerly followed him around the country and back and forth through the years. The search for Emmett Miller seemed like just a flimsy excuse for Tosches to write a combination meditation on and history of American music. Reading the book, I actually became more fascinated with 1920s guitar virtuoso, Eddie Lang, who I'd never heard of before, but who played with Miller, Lonnie Johnson, teamed up with boyhood pal and violin virtuoso Joe Venuti, and became the guitar player of choice for so many others, including a young Bing Crosby. Thank heaven for Mosaic Records, who helped me feed the need for Eddie Lang recordings.

If you're looking for a straight "point A to point B" biography or history, this will not be your book. But if your looking for a delightful ride through American music, hop aboard.

I went on a bit of a Nick Tosches binge , reading this book , THE DEVIL & SONNY LISTON , and TRINITIES , in one week's time . The two non-fiction books , I read them in , basically , anyway , the same day !!!!!!!!!
As has been said elsewhere , Nick doe tend to have his ----- um , schtick . We hear how bad he is , how he dislikes hippies and the Summer Of Love , once again !
Really , I DO like Nick , and , in fact , I have a Yahoo! group dedicated to him , and his generational cohort , Richard Meltzer -
Merrie Dick And Nickster Society . Url:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/merriericknnickstersociety

Or , just go to Yahoo! groups and enter " Nick Tosches " and " Richard Meltzer " .
Ya know , in this book , Nick calls John Hammond , etc. , " minstrels " ( In the blackface sense . ) Fair enough , but , since he's spent the whole book telling us how minstels - not just Emmett Miller , but , in general - weren't all that bad , were , in fact , often fairly good - Isn't he , then , making " minstrel " not an insult , thus making it not so much an instant put-down to cll Hammond , etc. , that he , preumably-like , intended ? Ah well . Just me . Hah hah . Perhaps , invoking Christianity just as Nick does , I will be forgiven for such perverseness/bitchiness !!!