https://youtu.be/PIXK9MDBmvo — A Look at the history and Discography of a folk singer/songwriter from Detroit that only recently gained recognition in the United States but was unaware of just how big of a star he was in South Africa. In 1970, Sixto Rodriguez released the classic album “Cold Fact” and followed it up with 1971’s “Coming From Reality.”
Neither album sold well but each was bootlegged and rereleased in the countries of South Africa, Australia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and New Zealand. His popularity in South Africa led to the events of a 2012 documentary titled, “Searching for Sugar Man.” The documentary won over 40 awards worldwide leading to Rodriguez achieving a much larger fan base.
Today I’m telling the story of a mysterious
folk singer and songwriter
who was rumored to be dead and became a legend outside
of his home country. He has more recently been brought
into the public spotlight due to the documentary,
“Searching for Sugar Man,” And is highly regarded for
his 2 classic albums. Join me to learn about the
history and discography of Rodriguez.
Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, Named for being the 6th child
of his Native American mother and Mexican father, was
born on July 10th, 1942 in Detroit, Michigan. His
family knew the value of hard work and growing up in
the poor neighborhoods of Detroit gave him the
inspiration for his blunt songs about the reality of
the difficulties faced by the inner city poor.
His first single, “I’ll Slip Away” was released in
1967 on a small record label that failed to sell many
copies of the single and the company later went out of
business. That label had suggested he use the name Rod
Riguez for that single though on future releases he
simply went by Rodriguez.
In 1968,
Producers Denis Coffey and Mike Theodore went to see
Rodriguez perform where he played with his
back turned to the audience in the smokey bar.
Thinking that Rodriguez’s songwriting level was second
only to Bob Dylan, the producers knew they had to
create an album
The debut full length album was released in the U.S.
in March of 1970 on the Sussex Label.
Two of the songs, “Hate Street Dialogue” and “Gommorah”
(A Nursery Rhyme) were written by the two producers
and Gary Harvey. While the other ten songs are original
compisitions by Rodriguez, he uses different 2 different
names for his song writing credits, 6 are under his
brother’s name, Jesus and 4 are under Sixth Prince.
The album starts with one of his most well known songs,
“Sugar Man” where Rodriguez sings about being in
a position in which you are needing your “Sugar Man”
to deliver color to your world.
This is a terrific piece of psychedelic
folk, driven by bass, light percussion, Rodriguez’s
acoustic guitar and his voice, this track has several
orchestral instruments that seem to come in and out as
well as some other psychedelic sound that I can’t put
my finger on but it kind of plays in and out with the
strings.
I think
What truly immortalized Rodriguez are the lyrics on
this album. Often a blunt look at reality as clearly
seen on the song “This is not a song, It’s an Outburst:
Or The Establishment Blues” which basically has a
bunch of quick one liners, starting with
“The Mayor hides the crime rate, Council Woman Hesitates,
Public gets irate but forget the vote date.”
Then of course there’s the great song about breaking up
“Forget it”
Musically, The album goes on to contain short and
relaxing
but
mostly upbeat folk rock songs typically with
Rodriguez’s acoustic guitar and voice, a bass, and
simplistic percussion often acompanied sporadically
by another lead type
instrument like a violin, electric guitar or organ.
The second
track is a cool hard rocker with a lot of heavy
fuzz on the bass and electric guitar licks then
“Gommorah” is a
blues song that has a weird
nursery rhyme with children voices.
Of course you can’t talk about this album without
mentioning the catchy song “I Wonder” which I take to
be about insecurities when dating. The bass on this
song is terrific and super memorable as it often comes
back to this riff or a variation of it.
The album didn’t sell very well at all and Rodriguez
went to London for a month in mid-to-late 1970. He
spent 3 weeks recording his second album with producer
Steve Rowland.
“Coming From Reality” was released in November of 1971
This time all of the songs are written by Rodriguez
but the style strays a bit from the previous album.
This time the song lengths average at over 4 minutes
and Rodriguez leans a little more into
singing some love songs.
“Climb Up on my Music” kicks the album off with a
psychedelic rock jam
that is packed full of guitar and keyboard solos.
But of course the real stand outs are the fantastic
folk songs. “A Most Disgusting Song” is a bit of a
honky tonk with Rodriguez’s commentary about the types
of people he repeatedly sees playing bar gigs. “I Think
of You” is a love song with strings and classical
guitar and “Sandreven Lullaby” is a guitar and
orchestral introduction to “Lifestyles” another harsh
observation of life in America.
Last one I want to mention is “Cause” which is like a
series of bad events starting with losing his job 2
weeks before Christmas. Ironically,
when the album didn’t sell, the record company dropped
him from the label a couple of weeks before Christmas.
though, Rodriguez had recorded a few more
songs including a new version of his 1967 single,
a new album was never finished and he returned to
working in Demolition and construction.
The next bit of history can be kind of confusing so I
did my best to research every little bit and give you
guys the concrete cold facts here, so if you appreciate
all the hard work I did on this video, please just give
me a “Like” down below and subscribe for more. Thank
you so much!
Throughout the 70’s, albums by Rodriguez were
re-released in South Africa and Australia. We know
that 400 copies of “Cold Fact” had made it to Australia
and that there are
several stories about the source of bootlegs that
spread wildly through these places
as well as a few others like Zimbabwe, Botswana and
New Zealand.
In 1976, thousands of copies of “Cold Fact” were found
in a warehouse in New York City and were shipped to
Australia where they sold out quickly. So an Australian
record label Blue Goose Music began to capitilize on
this by re-issuing the 2 studio albums. The second
album, “Coming from Reality” was re-titled “After The
Fact” and a new compilation album, “At His Best” was
put together
that includes three songs that had been recorded for
a third Rodriguez album that was never finished.
Rodriguez temporarily returned to music to do concert
tours of Australia in 1979 and 1981.
For more complete details on this next part of the
story, I highly recommend the award winning documentary
“Searching for Sugar Man.” To sum up, there were rumors
in South Africa about various ways that Rodriguez was
said to have killed himself on stage.
Due to the fact that his album sleeves didn’t contain
all of the players, had multiple names for Rodriguez,
and barely even showed his face, no one truly knew who
he was or how
to find the real story of his death. Eventually in the
90’s a website was created that compiled information
about Rodriguez with the mission of finding out much
more as well as preserving the legacy.
All the while Rodriguez continued to labor his days
away while living in his humble home in Detroit
completely unaware that he was bigger than Elvis in
South Africa. In
1997 one of his three daughters discovered the website
found today at http://www.SugarMan.org and commented in the
forums. Again, watch the documentary for better detail
but this leads to Rodriguez playing several sold out
concerts in South Africa.
Since then it seems Rodriguez has retired from hard
labor and has backing bands all around the world for
ocasional tours in different regions. He has also
discussed the desire to complete a third studio album
but so far we haven’t heard anything come out of this.
If this is your first time hearing of Rodriguez, I
mostly recommend his first album and I have links in
the description of all my videos with some suggested
places to start listening.
I also want to mention that documentaries like
“Searching for Sugar Man” helped inspire me to create
this channel because though it is a very enjoyable
and educational documentary, it purposefully leaves out
any information about his fame in other parts of the
world in order to make his story about visiting South
Africa more heart warming. I like the film, but I find
it to be a little misleading and it inspires me to
deliver the concrete cold facts.
If you guys enjoyed this video today, I’d very much
appreciate it if you give me a “Like” down below. Leave
a comment telling me your favorite song Rodriguez and
tell me an artist you’d like to see me do a video in
this style for.
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