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 musicmarkers from Homer to the Rolling Stones.

This is a brilliant, inspired journey by one of the most original writers at work today.