Seasick Steve [rare books]

It remains one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in music history. The nervous and dishevelled figure who played his punk-blues song 'Dog House Boogie' before Jools Holland and his dumbstruck Hootenanny audience that New Year's Eve 2006 seemed to have emerged from nowhere.

Apparently a sixty-five-year-old former hobo, Steve played his trademark three- string guitar (aka The Three-String Trance Wonder) and stomped on a wooden box with a Miss sippi motorcycle plate stuck on (aka The Mississippi Drum Machine). His Norwegian studio had recently failed, he'd had a heart attack, and he was only known among a tiny community of hardcore blues fans, yet by the next morning he was famous. His album Dog House Music, recorded in his kitchen, sold out overnight. 2007 brought a MOJO award and a huge festival tour, and 2008 worldwide success and his major label debut. The rest, they say, is history. Or perhaps not.

Everyone loved the grit and authenticity of Steve's songs about life on the road. His roots in the Deep South were celebrated across the media, and BBC Four took Steve round Mississippi for a documentary. But look a little closer, and a very different musical and personal journey rear its head. In this ground-breaking new biography, Matthew Wright draws on new information and musical collaborators to create a startling life story, turning the regular story of a hobo's wanderings in the wilderness on its head and bringing Seasick Steve's life in from the cold.