In the 1940s, working the fading minstrel circuit, Emmett Miller gave radio announcers a script for a "self-interview" to use at his personal appearances — in it he called himself and his partner minstrel men, nearly the only testimony in his own words to survive. Miller (1900-1962) started in blackface at sixteen with the Dan Fitch Minstrels; by 1924 a vaudeville connection landed him an Okeh contract, where he unveiled the "trick voice" — while jazz singers chased scat, Miller broke into yodel-like falsetto mid-word, a sound newspapers called otherworldly. His 1925 Asheville "Lovesick Blues" and 1928-29 sides cut with a Georgia Crackers band stacked with future jazz names carried the sound Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams later made country music's own. He never left minstrelsy, touring in greasepaint into the 1950s; no source names who taught him the voice — he survives only as an origin, never an inheritor.

the sound in question

1925

Lovesick BluesEmmett Miller