The Lost and Found Music of Connie Converse
Connie Converse was one of legions of aspiring musicians in 1950s Greenwich Village. She recorded a series of hauntingly beautiful songs that featured her voice, her guitar, and her poetic, allusive lyrics. Converse had no coterie of like-minded musicians; she inhabited no scene, music or otherwise. She made exactly one television appearance. By the early 1960s, having failed in her attempts to break the shackles of obscurity, the troubled Converse relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan, immersing herself in academic publishing and imbibing the college town’s political vitality. Then, in 1974, Converse loaded up her car, drove off, and was never heard from again. This seems utterly improbable. But these are the facts. Her ultimate fate—suicide, murder, a life lived under a new identity—remains a matter of conjecture.
Being ahead of one’s time is a
