Connie Converse - How Sad, How Lovely...

One by one, the years passed from the 1974 summer day when Connie Converse packed up her Volkswagen Bug, leaving behind letters to loved ones that said maybe they'd see her again or maybe they wouldn't.

And one by one, the odds grew against the chance that anyone outside those who knew her would ever hear the dozens of folk songs that friends and family always believed would make Converse famous.

Now, nearly 35 years after she gave up on her music and perhaps her life, Converse's music is being resurrected by an indie record label run by two New Yorkers who stumbled upon her recordings.

Read more...

Also, listen to this program WNYC dedicated to her.

Definitely one of the most interesting discoveries of the decade for me. Just gorgeous little folk songs with very unusual & evocative lyrics and the loveliest chord progressions. Infectious and moving.

-

Quite a story (hadn't seen this first time through). Any further information?

No, unfortunately. :(

However, I encourage everyone to buy this album.

I've been listening to this album since hearing that show last year -- the songs are really beautiful. If she'd just stuck around the Village a few more years, things might have worked out different for her.

http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/connie-cigarette-300x201.jpg

I've also been listening to this a lot in the last few months, especially "Trouble" and "We Lived Alone." I didn't know anything about her, though, so I was pretty surprised to learn that she lived here in Ann Arbor.

never heard of this, thx for the info!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IfRX3NwbA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q88EC6VnWk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnV65Yortc

this is good

this is what led me to her: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/connie-converses-time-has-come

i love her songs. i feel like i don't have the musical vocabulary to describe what is unusual about them; they are obviously "folk" but there's something jazzy/showtune-y going on too in her melodies and chord progressions

This is lovely, and yeah I can't describe it adequately either. She really has a unique songwriting style, there's a sort of "old weird Americana" vibe to it, with references to "sheiks of Araby" and such. Coincidentally, I just got into Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, which is an ornately orchestrated polar opposite, but I feel like there are similar things going on in both.

so wonderful. more than a whiff of ivor cutler to her songwriting

one of my students did a presentation on connie converse last semester and blew my mind -- i had never heard of her
she was an excellent student!!

her songs are little gems. there is a gentle, kind of traditional british quality to her manner and singing. lots of lines that are so sly or neat they make me laugh, but such melancholy running through them all as well. really makes your heart ache

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/magazine/connie-converse-disappearance.html

hanif abdurraqib on connie converse

Had not seen this thread!! Was struck by a Converse cover last year, first I'd heard of her---as posted on The Roches:

Mountain Stage recently re-broadcast Suzzy & Lucy's December set from home, and it's pretty involving,in some unexpected ways, like when voices infiltrate the big acoustic guitar---not boomy guitar, just something about the home recording plus the typically quirky Mountain Stage sound, at least on radio---haven't listened to the archived set yet, though incl. songs that didn't make the broadcast time constraints, from a very strong, variegated, cohesive li'l trip through originals and covers (Connie Converse, from the 50s, I think they said, comes across like a Roche, Suzzy's hip youngest aunt maybe), also "Factory Girl," not the Stones alas, but a vivid British folk song: Audio and playlist are herehttps://www.mountainstage.org/archives/Pages/playlist.aspx?playlistid=212

― dow, Sunday, April 11, 2021 1:33 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

"when voices infilrate" that's mainly a passage in one song, I think; voices are up front most of the time.

― dow, Sunday, April 11, 2021

Amazon's got the 2017 tribute album too, Vanity of Vanities, on Tzadik:

1 Honey Bee - Cassandra Jenkins
2 Trouble - Sam Amidon
3 One By One - Martha Wainwright
4 Playboy of the Western World - Arone Dyer and Greg Saunier
5 John Brady - Jesse Harris
6 Man in the Sky - Elysian Fields
7 How Sad How Lovely - Mike Patton and Alain Johannes
8 Roving Woman - Petra Haden
9 Talkin' Like You - Margaret Glaspy and Julian Lage
10 Sad Lady - Laurie Anderson
11 There Is a Vine - Big Thief with Jeff Tweedy and Twain
12 Witch and the Wizard - Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney
13 Fortune's Child - Sarah Jarosz
14 I Have Considered the Lilies - Jessica Pavone and Mary Halvorson
15 Sorrow Is My Name - Karen O
16 Honey Bee (Version 2) - Cassandra Jenkins

new book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/to-anyone-who-ever-asks-the-life-music-and-mystery-of-connie-converse-howard-fishman/18748510?ean=9780593187364