Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose protest-filled songs and stark images of urban streets, failed to find an American audience in the early 1970s but resonated in Australia and especially South Africa, leading to a late-career comeback captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary winner “Looking for a Sugar Man” In 2012, he died on a Tuesday. He was 81 years old.
a to publish On his official website he announced his death but did not say where he died or provide a cause.
Rodriguez’s story was, as The New York Times described it in 2012, “a realistic tale of overlooked talent, bad luck and missed opportunities, with an improbable stop in the Hamptons and a Hollywood finale.”
Rodriguez—performing under only his family name but his full name is Sixto Diaz Rodriguez—was playing bars in Detroit in the late 1960s, and his folk-rock music was reminiscent of Bob Dylan, when producer Harry Black signed him. In the documentary, Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore, who would go on to produce his debut album, “Cold Fact” (1970), talk about hearing Rodriguez at a particularly smoky establishment called Sewer on the Detroit River, where, as he often did, he played. and showed it to the audience.
“Maybe I forced you to listen to the lyrics, because you couldn’t see the man’s face,” Mr. Coffey said.
A single released under the name “Rod Riggs” went nowhere. “Cold Fact”, released on the Sussex label, attracted few favorable notices; Its first track, “Sugar Man”, gave the documentary its title.
“Rodriguez is a singer-poet/journalist, telling stories of today,” Jim Knippenberg wrote in The Cincinnati Enquirer. “He does it with a sound very Dylan-like, very Dylanesque-like, and with an almost entirely guitar-dominated instrumental backing. But it’s not Dylan’s carbon. Rodriguez is much more straightforward.”
Mostly, though, the album went unnoticed in America, as did its follow-up a year later, Coming From Reality.
“Cutting records was easy,” Rodriguez told Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald in 1979. “Running them was much more difficult.”
He was interviewed by an Australian newspaper that year because, while he had settled into life as a laborer and office worker in Detroit (although he still played in bars and even worked unsuccessfully in various political offices), he was — unknown to him — developing fans abroad. One of the places where his music found an audience was Australia, and in 1979 he was invited to tour there. He returned in 1981 for some shows with the band Midnight Oil and released a live album in Australia.
Rodriguez’s music found a larger following in South Africa, which was still under apartheid and cut off from the rest of the world in many respects. He seems to have no idea how popular he will be there, especially among white South Africans uncomfortable with apartheid and the country’s strict conservative culture.
“For many of us South Africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives,” said Steven Segerman, a Cape Town record store owner, in the documentary. “In the mid-’70s, if you walked into a slum, white, liberal, middle-class household with a turntable and a stack of pop records, and if you turned the records over, you’d always see ‘Abe Road’ next to the Beatles, you’d always see ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’.” It was written by Simon and Garfunkel, and you’ll always see Rodriguez’s “Cold Fact.” For us, it was one of the most famous records ever. The message it had was, “Be anti-establishment.”
In the mid-1990s Mr. Sigerman began trying to find out more about the mysterious artist known as Rodriguez and how he died. Rumors spread that he killed himself on stage, died of an overdose, etc. Joined by Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, a journalist who was also looking for Rodriguez, they eventually find the singer, who still lives in Detroit. A 1998 tour of South Africa followed, with Rodriguez playing six sold-out shows in 5,000-seat arenas.
“It was strange seeing all those bright white faces, all knowing every word to every one of my songs,” he told Britain’s The Sunday Telegraph in 2009.
After the South African tour, he performed in England, Sweden and other countries. In the US, the Light in the Attic label re-released “Cold Fact” in 2008 and “Coming From Reality” in 2009.
Another round of rediscovery was ahead. In 2012, Malek Benjelloul released his first and only documentary, “Looking for the Sugar Man” (died in 2014), to the admiration of the viewers. The film, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, focused on the research of Mr. Segerman and Mr. Bartholomew-Strydom and included an interview with Rodriguez, who then finds himself at the Hamptons International Film Festival and begins a new journey. round round.
Matt Sullivan founded Light in the Attic Records, which reissued Rodriguez’s albums.
“His lyrics and music were largely honest and devoid of substance,” he said via email. “It immediately struck a chord the second we heard her, and she still does, nearly 20 years later.”
Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was born on July 10, 1942 in Detroit. His mother, Maria, died when he was a young boy. His father, Ramon, was a worker who became a foreman in a steel mill.
He said he started playing the guitar at the age of 16.
He told The Times in 2012: “Of course I’ve been interested in Dylan forever, as well as Barry McGuire, ‘Eve of destruction’ something.”
During a period of relative anonymity following the release of his albums, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Wayne State University in Detroit.
No information was immediately available about the survivors.
Includes Coming From Reality album a song called “The Reason”, Lament on the hard times and disappointments in life.
“They told me everyone had to pay their due,” Rodriguez sings. “And I explained that I paid them too much.”
But in a 2009 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he was much quieter about his unusual career path.
“My story is not a rags-to-riches story,” he said. “It’s rags to rags, and I’m happy about it. Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel like I’m living in the real world. And nothing beats reality.”
