The story of missing folk artist Connie Converse
The music industry has failed many incredible female folk artists, such as Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs, to the point that you could make a whole subgenre out of ‘forgotten and subsequently rediscovered female folk musicians’. Often told that their music was not conventionally commercial enough or subjected to gender-based discrimination, many female folk singers were forced to abandon their musical ambitions due to the industry’s lack of equality.
Connie Converse was a true pioneer of the contemporary folk singer-songwriter genre, beginning her musical career in the 1950s, predating those considered to be folk icons, such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Folk scholar Ellen Stekert told The New York Times, “She was even better than [Dylan] as a lyricist and composer, but she didn’t have his showbiz savvy, and she wasn’t interested in writing protest songs.”
However, Converse never released any music during her lifetime, unable to see herself become somewhat of a cult folk icon in the 2000s. The musician disappeared in 1974, cutting all contact with her family and friends. To this day, no one knows what happened to her and for how long she lived; all we have are her beautiful songs, which resurfaced in the early 2000s thanks to her old friend, Gene Deitch, and several university students.
Elizabeth Converse, or Connie as she was better known, was born in New Hampshire in 1926. After moving to New York in 1944, she worked at places such as the American Institute of Pacific Relations and the Academy Photo Offset printing house, singing in her free time. However, by the late 1950s, she decided to concentrate on music and moved to the West Village. During this period, she wrote plenty of songs on her guitar that would be discovered decades later. She recorded them on an at-home reel-to-reel recorder with the help of Deitch, documenting her songwriting process through a series of demos.
Through Deitch’s connection to television (he was a cartoonist and animator), Converse appeared on CBS’s The Morning Show in 1954. It was her only known television performance, and no known recordings exist. Deitch told The Awl, “There were many better singers than Connie. But few were as intelligent or literate or beautiful. Her songs still haunt me.”
A few years later, she recorded an album, Musicks (Volumes I and II), for her brother, Phil, which remains unreleased. Despite trying hard to get her music out there, no one seemed interested, so she left New York, where she worked as a secretary and writer in Michigan. The following decade saw Converse’s life rapidly deteriorate. She was depressed and reliant on alcohol and cigarettes, and there is no evidence to suggest that she was ever in a romantic relationship. Phil explained, “After New York, I think she’d arrived at a place where she decided she wasn’t going to make it, and in many ways, that really hurt her.”
Life got too much for Converse, and by the early 1970s, her family made efforts to help her regain some optimism. Trips to England and Alaska were unsuccessful, and she eventually decided to pack up her things and move away to start a new life. She wrote a series of letters to her family and drove away. “Let me go. Let me be if I can. Let me not be if I can’t. […] Human society fascinates me and awes me and fills me with grief and joy; I just can’t find my place to plug into it,” she wrote.
Although the family hired a private investigator to find Converse, they ultimately decided that it was her decision to leave, and they wanted to respect that. Phil explained, “Leaving was her choice, and I would be embarrassed to show up on her doorstep and say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ I know it might sound ghastly, but that’s how I felt.”
Converse’s music was discovered thanks to Deitch, who was invited onto the WNYC radio show, Spinning on Air by David Garland in 2004. Using it as an opportunity to play some of Converse’s music, Deitch played ‘One By One’. The track captured the attention of two young listeners, Dan Dzula and David Herman. Knowing that Converse’s music would touch others, they decided to do further research and, using songs provided by Deitch and Phil, created the compilation album How Sad, How Lovely.
The record was released in 2009 and has since become a hugely influential album, loved by current geniuses such as Angel Olsen, Laurie Anderson and Karen O. Converse’s beautiful body of work reflects her intelligence and warmth, and her distinctively feminine writing was truly innovative.
Listen to the album below.
