To anyone who ever asks : the life, music, and mystery of Connie Converse

Author / Creator

Fishman, Howard, author

Available as

Physical

Summary

"From a frequent music and culture contributor to The New Yorker, the mysterious, true story of the life of Connie Converse-a mid-century New York City singer/songwriter whose haunting music never ...

"From a frequent music and culture contributor to The New Yorker, the mysterious, true story of the life of Connie Converse-a mid-century New York City singer/songwriter whose haunting music never found recognition-and the tale of one man's quest to uncover the truth"--

Connie Converse's recordings were too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense. Her music seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana, the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later. And then there was the legend: in 1974, at the age of fifty, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Fishman approaches Converse's story as both a fan and a journalist, and places her in the canon as a significant outsider artist, a missing link between a now old-fashioned kind of American music and the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever. It is a story that includes suicide, mental illness, cross-country road trips, 1950s Greenwich Village, an America marching into the Cold War, questions about sexuality, and visionary, forward thinking about race, class, and conflict. -- adapted from jacket

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