Nick Tosches is a great writer. I've always enjoyed his stuff. I'll have to pick that book up. Having started off listening to Hank and Wills and Patsy and like that, it's quite a shock to work your way backwards to Miller. Suddenly, you hear all these people in his voice. You realize, "Good god, they all copied him!"

I agree there's likely tons of stuff out there--old stuff--that will never be released to the public. I once made an effort to find out who recorded the first ragtime but with no luck. Even the true ragtime scholars I know couldn't tell me. My friend, Mike Montgomery, is considered perhaps the world's foremost piano roll authority and even he didn't know. Chris Ware in Chicago didn't know either. Reginald Robinson also didn't know. And both Ware and Robinson have been uncovering a lot of amazing stuff in the last few years including a fragment of a previously unknown Joplin composition.

But I do love finding these old guys. But you have to wonder how they ever slipped through the cracks.