May 15, 2009
Connie Converse | How sad, how lovely
I have recently discovered an incredible songwriter called Connie Converse. Connie wrote and recorded a number of songs over 50 years ago, in an apartment in Greenwich village. These songs have only recently been unearthed. You are about to be among the first ever to hear them.
These recordings have something of the power of those hot San Antonio nights when Robert Johnson sang into a horn in a hotel room in 1936. This woman wrote her songs before the Beatles showed up. Before Elvis showed up. Before rocknroll showed up. Long before the singer songwriter paradigm showed up.
Connie Converse was writing songs in the fifties of such intimacy, wit and poignancy that would not be heard in the mainstream until Joni Mitchell came along, a hundred cultural light years later. There’s an uncanny quality in Connie Converse. Her songs go on journeys into yearning, into the uncanny.
And her story is as mythical as Johnson’s, albeit in a completely different mood. Connie Converse left Greenwich Village – dispirited at lack of record industry interest in her songs – in 1960, right when Bob Dylan was arriving in town. She moved to some city beginning with M: somewhere she never really felt right in, though she had by the sound of it a very close supportive group of family and friends around her. One day in 1974, she packed up her volkswagen, dispatched a bunch of farewell letters, and headed off. She has not been heard of since.
She would be 85 now. I so much want to call out to her, to tell her that people are listening, that we love her songs, that there will be so many people who will listen to and love her songs now. That she was living out of time and place, that people care about her story. That I care about her story.
Connie Converse! I care about your story. I love your songs. You matter. You absolutely matter.
Now, listen.
And these are the people who literally unearthed Connie’s songs from the bottom of a filing cabinet, and made them available for the world to buy and to listen to.
UPDATE: Connie Converse is now on Bandcamp. The full album is streaming and directly purchasable there too.
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Oh Lucy, thank you. This is amazing and beautiful and heartbreaking. What music and what a story. I love the way her songs seem at first like one thing–and then turn, generating an unexpected thing that keeps unfolding. I have to own these songs–and there’s not much I hear that makes me quickly say that.
You may recall,
My heart was wild….
Isn’t she amazing? At the lauderette site (a record company apparently made just to get a record of Connie’s songs out) there are links to cd baby, iTunes, etc. They’ve also made a website for her.
thank you so much, Lucy. fantastic.
Wow, her songs are lovely. Thank you, Lucy.
What a great treasure.
I just hope she is in hiding and will someday soon come back to us and create more music. The same way Cat Stevens did.
I loved the part where he heard (finally?) the words of the dark descant floating above the light melody and tempo of the song he was speaking of at that time in the show. I, likely, would not have noticed, had he not pointed it up. Got me to thinking about layers of pieces that I have probably missed. Got me thinking how deeply I buried some things under layers and layers. Got me to thinking about the layers Connie layered in her pieces that maybe nobody has even plumbed the depth of. (Although, this guy did a pretty good job looking deeper.) This was found, as I recall, in the bottom of a file cabinet.
OK, I’m going down a bunny hole with this one. First the archeology, the find. Then the finding personality with interest enough to decode? Did they have to find a reel-to-reel recorder to play the originals back on? (Note to Rick, How will they find your shit, let alone decode it, if it’s found 50 years from now. And if it’s decoded, who will dissect it enough to state what you’ve said?)
Lucy, thank you for this. It’s taken me a while to respond, but, it really got to me. The story, the music, that element that is in many of us, that desire to disappear. Well, it’s in me anyway – like Rick said, what we leave, for whom? Who will want it and what will they make of it and should we care.
I often ponder about the things I create or at least the photos that I take. As the pile of negatives gets ever higher – what will become of them, do I give a fuck, should I give a fuck?
I found the whole program wonderful, I have listened twice now and feel sure I will again.
Some stories fuck with your head in a way you hadn’t expected. This did.
Thank you.
Oh, I’m not overlooking the music – beautiful.
Isn’t it an incredible show, Phil? I was woken up this morning about 5 hours earlier than my usual sunday waking hour, by Tar who needed to poo, and while I was out in the garden with him I found that I had Connie singing happily in my head:
In the tree
there’s a sort of squirrel thing
Sounds just like we did
when we were quarreling…
I know she has a strong melancholy quality, but she also has a great sense of humour and I just dig that about her.
Yes, her story also reached into me powerfully, into my heart and mind and sort of nested there. I think the guys who run Lauderette Records are thrilled at the response to her music, and in particular how well David Garland’s team made that radio show. They really put her story together beautifully. It really sent me into some deep desire to want to find her, and I don’t mean that entirely literally.
Lucy, absolutely – the story, her words, her voice have been rattling around inside of me. Yeah, finding her – I know what you mean.
I thought the interview with her brother was so touching, the respect he had/has for her privacy – and the reading of her letter at the end. She is probably dead, but, wouldn’t it be crazy if she wasn’t?
Not sure if the story needs an ending – the mystery kinda completes it, the sharing of her music now, just wonderful.
The show was wonderful, so thoughtfully put together – I shall listen again and I will also get the CD.
Yes, her brother seemed very sensitive and kind. I actually got an email from Dan, who produced Connie’s record, the man who dug deep into the filing cabinet and set up Lau derette records to make Connie available to people to discover and enjoy. I hope he would not mind me quoting him here:
“Developing this album was an incredible labor of love, a grass-roots project through and through…Until this year, only a very small handful of people had ever heard of Connie or her work. Much to her family’s delight, she’s now being warmly received by a wide and diverse audience. It’s quite a phenomenon [understatement], and although the mystery of Connie’s disappearance is still somewhat unsettling, the success and reception of Connie’s music has brought real joy to her family, specifically her brother, Phil, her first and oldest fan.”
So that’s pretty goddamned moving. That is something of a ‘happy ending’, Phil. Yes, the sharing of her music, now. And for her family to see how deeply moved people are by it.
Lucy, thank you for sharing the correspondence – yes a very happy ending. You can’t help pondering her fate – I’d like to think she is a sprightly 80 something who browses the web and perhaps enjoys throwing her name into Google – suddenly she sees all this.
I say this because. I meet this old guy on the canal path who paints, Jasper Rose – through talking I find out from the mid 60s he lectured on art history in various universities in the states, finishing in Santa Cruz, CA. Anyway, a while back I asked him if I could take a few photos and I put them on my blog – I must have had a dozen emails from people asking me if this was THE Jasper Rose and how could they contact him etc. So, like they obviously googled his name and found him through me – I’d love to think of her sat somewhere browsing and suddenly finding all this lovely stuff about her.
Fanciful I know – but a nice thought!
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