Emmett Miller The Minstrel Man From Georgia (Columbia/Legacy)
“Yeah, but ’bout the time he started at me he’s liable to go color-blind.”
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Hank Williams’s hit rendition of “Lovesick Blues,” recorded in December 1948, was modeled after Miller’s 1928 version; western-swing pioneer Bob Wills called Miller’s sublime treatment of “I Ain’t Got Nobody” his favorite song; the Singing Breakman Jimmie Rodgers’s blue yodel reveals Miller’s influence; and Merle Haggard dedicated his raucous live album I Love Dixie Blues to Miller.
Miller’s jazz-country-blues-pop fusion on his OKeh recordings, anticipating most American pop, might not seem as bizarre today as they must have nearly 70 years ago. Amid a hopped-up preswing jazz backing, his treatment of then-contemporary pop and jazz tunes like “Dusky Stevedore,” “She’s Funny That Way,” and “Lovin’ Sam (The Sheik of Alabam’)” was without precedent.
