Where Dead Voices Gather

June 25, 2001
Beyond a handful of recordings revealing early jazz-era blackface minstrel Emmett Miller as "one of the strangest and most stunning stylists," some good press in the late 1920s and a few scattered recollections of a pleasant fellow who liked his whiskey, Miller has virtually escaped memory. But Tosches (Dino), a bestselling author and contributing editor at Vanity Fair, unearths this forgotten yodeling gem and excavates further still the creation, impact and demise of minstrel music. Neither tsk-tsking nor snickering at minstrelsy's racial humor, Tosches uses Miller to examine this period of "musical miscegenation and cultural pollinations" and the folks who provided its soundtrack. In his race to get down the facts—play dates, names, etc.—some of the author's characteristic fearlessness and quick humor is lost. But he was clearly wrong to call his obsessive venture a "mad labor for which no audience exists... grown now into... a book so bereft of commercial potential that not even I, who can skin a snake without its knowing it, can hope to con the most benighted and gullible of publishers into paying a decent dollar for it." On the contrary, Tosches's quest is irresistible, and many will, like the author, fall under the elusive yodeler's spell. (Aug. 21)Forecast:Despite its obscure subject, the book—to be advertised in
Time, the
New York Times Book Review and the
Village Voice—will be widely reviewed and will reach an audience far beyond jazz aficionados. Tosches's wide-ranging pop-cultural subjects (e.g., country music, rock 'n' roll, Dean Martin, Sonny Liston) have made him popular, as evidenced by
The Nick Tosches Reader (Da Capo), culled from his 30-year career.

April 15, 2001
In an act of excavation and re-creation, Tosches rescues an obscure African American singer named Emmett Miller. The real reason to read this is Tosches himself, who displays "an Olympian mastery of language it's like reading Bukowski by way of Tennyson" (LJ 4/15/00).

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2001
In his exhaustively researched new biography, " Vanity Fair" contributing editor Tosches, author of " Dino" (1992) and " The Devil "and Sonny Liston (2000), uses the life of obscure singer Emmett Miller as a template to examine the history of twentieth-century American music. Miller, the "clarinet-voiced comedian" who rose to fame as a blackface performer in the early part of the century, was a major influence on American music, helping shape country, jazz, and current pop music. Yet frustratingly little is known about him. Tosches takes what few clues remain about this important cultural figure and traces his life, as he rises to fame in minstrel shows, moves to vaudeville just as it is being eclipsed by talking pictures, and ultimately fades into obscurity. While doing so, Tosches gives the reader a comprehensive education in music of the twentieth century, filling his work with fascinating first-hand accounts from the performers of the time. Tosches' scholarly yet irreverent style makes this book eminently readable, appealing to fans of both music and American history alike.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)