His loss of life, at dwelling in Detroit, was confirmed by his daughter Sandra Rodriguez-Kennedy, who mentioned he had suffered two strokes in recent times.
The singer and guitarist, a son of Mexican immigrants, recorded underneath the one identify Rodriguez and made his full-length debut with “Chilly Truth” (1970), 32 minutes of propulsive, brooding, psychedelic-tinged people rock. The album featured idiosyncratic songs like “Sugar Man,” an eerie portrait of a drug vendor and his shoppers; “Hate Street Dialogue,” an anti-authoritarian anthem addressing police brutality; and “I Wonder,” an up-tempo love track wherein he sang of “the love you’ll be able to’t discover” and “the loneliness that’s mine.”
The document flopped in the US, by no means cracking the Billboard album chart. When his 1971 follow-up, “Coming From Actuality,” fared simply as poorly, he put his music profession on maintain, taking jobs in dwelling renovation, roofing and demolition to assist his household in Detroit. On the aspect he studied philosophy, launched into long-shot campaigns for mayor and metropolis council, and walked town’s Cass Hall neighborhood, the place he was typically seen with a guitar case slung over his shoulder, sporting darkish glasses and his signature all-black outfit, thick darkish hair working right down to his shoulders.
For years, that gave the impression to be the top of the story, as Rodriguez got here to symbolize — at the least to these few who knew him — yet one more music trade parable of unrealized promise and neglected expertise.
But midway world wide, he had develop into a people hero and music famous person, at the least as common because the Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley. His data had been embraced by younger listeners in South Africa, together with anti-apartheid activists who sang alongside to rebellious lyrics like “The pig and hose have set me free / I’ve tasted hate avenue’s hanging tree” and “This method’s gonna fall quickly / To an offended younger tune.”
“Each revolution wants an anthem,” recalled Craig Bartholomew Strydom, a South African music journalist, in a 2012 interview with the Economist. “ ‘Chilly Truth’ was South Africa’s.”
Rodriguez’s recognition was solely amplified by the thriller surrounding his short-lived recording profession. Within the pre-internet age, rumors proliferated that he had set himself on fireplace throughout a live performance, died of a drug overdose, joined a terrorist group, murdered a girlfriend or been institutionalized. Two followers who had been keen to determine what had occurred to the singer — Strydom and Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, a Cape City document retailer proprietor nicknamed after the Rodriguez track — tracked him down within the Nineties, finally persuading him to carry out in post-apartheid South Africa.
Their quest impressed the 2012 documentary “Trying to find Sugar Man,” directed by Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, who had met Segerman on a go to to South Africa. “This was the best, probably the most wonderful, true story I’d ever heard, an virtually archetypal fairy story,” Bendjelloul informed the New York Instances upon the film’s release. (The filmmaker died by suicide in 2014.) “It’s an ideal story. It has the human aspect, the music side, a resurrection and a detective story.”
Only a few years earlier, the Seattle document label Gentle within the Attic had reissued Rodriguez’s two studio albums. The documentary introduced him far higher publicity: He was featured on “60 Minutes,” invited to perform on the “Late Present With David Letterman” and headlined venues together with Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in New York and the Royal Albert Corridor in London.
Whereas he had as soon as carried out together with his again to the viewers, he embraced the popularity, albeit after some preliminary resistance. “I’ve had such an bizarre life,” he informed The Washington Submit in 2012, explaining that he was initially skeptical of showing within the movie, preferring to let family and friends members converse on his behalf. When the film received the Academy Award for finest documentary function, he wasn’t on the ceremony to rejoice, later saying that he was afraid he would take consideration away from the director.
“I used to be asleep when it received,” Rodriguez informed Rolling Stone, “however my daughter Sandra referred to as to inform me. I don’t have TV service anyway.”
For many years, he lacked not only a tv however a pc, automobile and cellphone. He had lived since 1976 at a modest Detroit dwelling that he purchased for $50 at a authorities public sale, and preferred to say that there have been solely “three fundamental wants: meals, clothes and shelter. When you get right down to that degree, the whole lot else is icing.”
It was an anti-consumerist philosophy that he appeared to precise within the phrases of his first single, “I’ll Slip Away” (1967), which he launched underneath the identify Rod Riguez: “And you may maintain your symbols of success / Then I’ll pursue my very own happiness / And you may maintain your clocks and routines / Then I’ll go mend all my shattered goals.”
Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, who acquired his first identify as a result of he was his mother and father’ sixth baby, was born in Detroit on July 10, 1942. His mom died in childbirth 4 years later. His father was “a pick-and-shovel man,” as he put it, a guide laborer who additionally performed the violin.
In line with his daughter, an uncle gave him his first set of guitar strings when Rodriguez was 15, telling him, “You may make some huge cash with this.”
By his early 20s, Rodriguez was immersed within the protest-driven people music of the Sixties, listening to singer-songwriters together with Bob Dylan, Barry McGuire and Phil Ochs. He was additionally writing music of his personal.
“We thought he was just like the inner-city poet,” session guitarist Dennis Coffey, who co-produced Rodriguez’s first album, mentioned within the documentary. Steve Rowland, who produced Rodriguez’s second document and in addition produced songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and Peter Frampton, described him within the movie as “a smart man, a prophet,” including that he had “by no means labored with anybody as gifted.”
After he was found performing in a Detroit nightclub referred to as the Sewer, Rodriguez signed with the newly launched Sussex label, led by music government Clarence Avant. Copies of his first album made their means not solely to South Africa, but in addition to Australia, the place the document was championed by a Sydney radio DJ and have become a collector’s merchandise, reportedly promoting at document shops for greater than $300.
Information of his success reached him when he was contacted by a pair of Australian live performance promoters, who persuaded him to come back out of musical retirement and tour the continent in 1979. “The person himself appeared virtually embarrassed on stage,” Billboard journal reported, “and spoke not more than a dozen brief traces all through every present. When returning to stage for an encore at his first Sydney present, he mumbled emotionally to the viewers: ‘Eight years … and this occurs. I don’t imagine it.’”
The tour led to an Australian reside album, “Alive” (1981), which coincided with a second tour by way of the nation. “I believed it was the spotlight of my profession,” Rodriguez informed Rolling Stone in 2013. “I had achieved that epic mission. Not a lot occurred after that. No calls or something.”
Rodriguez acquired a bachelor’s diploma in philosophy from Wayne State College in Detroit in 1981. Round that very same time, he married Konny Koskos. They had been nonetheless married when he died however had been separated for at the least twenty years, based on his daughter. His first marriage, to Rayma Rawa, led to divorce.
Along with his spouse and his daughter Sandra, survivors embody two different daughters, Eva and Regan Rodriguez, all from his first marriage; a brother; eight grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.
For all his success abroad, Rodriguez by no means acquired a royalty examine for the estimated half-million document he bought in South Africa. His label boss, Avant, was dismissive when requested within the documentary why Rodriguez had by no means profited from these gross sales.
“You suppose it’s one thing I’m going to fret about, a 1970 contract? In case you do, you’re out of your thoughts,” Avant mentioned with an expletive. (Interviewed by the Instances after the movie’s launch, the chief was extra measured. “I had nothing to do with the place the cash went,” he said. “I don’t know who the South Africans had been paying, and I don’t know who had my international rights.”)
By all accounts, Rodriguez was extra desirous about making up for misplaced time than in pursuing misplaced royalties. He carried out some 250 live shows within the final 10 years, and was making ready to make one other album when his document deal fell by way of about 5 years in the past, based on his daughter Sandra.
“When it didn’t occur,” she mentioned in a cellphone interview, “he simply principally collapsed,” struggling his first stroke.
“You’ll be able to’t linger an excessive amount of in your selections, so sure, I selected to face actuality,” Rodriguez informed the Instances in 2012, trying again on his determination to go away behind music and go into development. “I’m a household particular person, and also you make these selections. You must embrace it, my father used to say. You don’t maintain it over there, the place it could possibly damage you. There’s no disgrace in arduous work.”
