A singer of whom you've probably never heard

I was surprised to find out today that the music of Sixto Rodriguez is virtually unknown in the USA, even though he's an American artist. He was a major star in South Africa during my formative years, particularly amongst those doing their military National Service. He had much the same impact on them as Jimi Hendrix had on the 1960's US servicemen in Vietnam.

I did a bit of investigating, and found that Rodriguez was a bit like the biblical prophet: 'not without honor, except in his own country'. A 2005 article in the Guardian helped explain the background.

Now 63, Rodriguez was working on a Detroit building site when he discovered he was a star in, of all places, South Africa: a fact that, understandably, "blew my mind". Despite its undoubted qualities - its stream-of-consciousness protest songs, heavy with drug references, are pitched somewhere between Bob Dylan and Love, tricked out with bursts of sinister electronics and luscious string arrangements - [his 1970 debut album] Cold Fact had vanished without a trace in the US: a state of affairs not helped when Rodriguez's record label Sussex, also home to Bill Withers, went bust. Bizarrely, however, Cold Fact not only secured a release in South Africa but became a platinum-selling hit. The effect of the album on national service conscripts under the apartheid regime is frequently compared to that of Jimi Hendrix or the Doors on US servicemen in Vietnam.

"South Africa in the early 1970s was a very restrictive society," says Stephen Segerman, a former Johannesburg jeweller who made it his mission to track down Rodriguez. "Cold Fact was never banned, but it never received any radio play, except on pirate stations like Swazi Radio, which weren't under the censor board. The song I Wonder had this line, 'I wonder how many times you had sex', which for South Africa in those days was about as controversial as it could get. For kids, it was like a joke song, they were like 'listen to this!'. Then they heard the album, and realised there was a lot more in it, it was trippy, it was beautiful, it had a lot of social content. It affected a lot of people in a lot of different ways. The commercial success was unbelievable. If you took a family from South Africa, a normal, middle-class family, and looked through their record collection, you'd find Abbey Road, Neil Young's Harvest and Cold Fact. It was a word-of-mouth success."

The word of mouth did not reach Detroit, where Rodriguez had given up his recording career after a second album, 1972's Coming From Reality, vanished in much the same fashion as his debut. He tried an unsuccessful career in politics, studied for a BA in philosophy, worked in a petrol station and apparently "took part in Indian pow-wows throughout Michigan", before becoming a self-employed labourer. In South Africa, meanwhile, his record company seemed to have no idea of his whereabouts. In place of any concrete information, rumours spread. It was variously assumed he was dead from a heroin overdose, had been burned to death onstage, had been committed to a mental hospital, or was serving a prison sentence for murdering his lover: "Who or what Rodriguez is remains a mystery," claimed the sleeve notes to a reissued CD.

Segerman and journalist Craig Bartholomew began their search after the former discovered to his amazement that Rodriguez was unknown in his home country. After several months chasing false leads, they received a startled email from his daughter: "Do you really want to know about my father?" A series of rapturously received South African tours, two documentaries and a platinum disc followed, a fairly remarkable turn of events for an artist who had never played live in America. "Oh gee, it blew me away when I found out, it was so good," says Rodriguez.

There's more at the link.

It must have been quite a shock for Rodriguez (albeit a very pleasant one) to find that years - decades! - after he'd given up on his musical ambitions, he was remembered as a top-ranked musician on the other side of the world! His music career revived after the news reached him, and he's toured Australia and South Africa, as well as several European cities, and has finally begun to get some live gigs here in the USA as well.

For those (I presume most of you) who don't know his music, here are three tracks from his first and still most successful album, Cold Fact. (There are many more on YouTube - click the link for a listing.) The first is 'Crucify Your Mind'.

Next is 'Establishment Blues' - in which I find eerie parallels to US politics today, forty years after it was first recorded!

Finally, here's a live recording from Seattle in June 2009 of 'I Wonder'.

It's good to see that at the age of 69, Rodriguez is still in fine musical form!

Peter