A very talented gentleman named Daniel Dzula and his friend David Herman are working to restore the voice of a lost 50s songwriter from Greenwich Village, Connie Converse.
(Taken from the Connie Converse fan page)
“Around 1949, Elizabeth “Connie” Converse dropped out of Mt. Holyoke College and moved to New York City to make her way as a musician. Over the course of the next decade, she wrote and recorded a body of truly unique, plaintive and haunting work. Some songs she recorded herself in her Greenwich Village apartment; some were recorded by friends enamored of her music, but almost none ever reached an audience wider than, as she once put it, “dozens of people all over the world.”
By the early 1960’s, despondent over the limited commercial success of her music, she decided to leave New York for Ann Arbor, Michigan where, in 1974, Connie wrote a series of goodbye letters to friends and family, packed up her Volkswagen and disappeared. She has not been heard from since.”
Daniel is working very closely with Connie’s family to restore and remaster this beautiful music to life, Click here to listen to some examples.
I recorded Connie Converse privately at my home in 1954. My restored recordings will be a part of the coming release of a CD by Lauderette.
Connie was an undiscovered genius. Her songs are brilliant – evocative – personal – like nothing else. She was a one-of-a-kind original.
WOW! I just listened to her “Talkin’ Like You” and really liked it. The unrealized talent reminded me of Nick Drake, in that they both thought they were failures only to be discovered decades later. Thankfully the internet can give people like her the audience they seek nowdays. Maybe it’s because I just watched Cold Case, but I wonder what happened to her. Did she drive herself up to her mountains to end her unrealized life like Drake? Did she meet a dark stranger that silenced her beautiful voice? Did she marry someone, take his name and have a family? Is she alive today, maybe she sits in a small nursing home rocking to the forgotten tunes in her head unaware that success has finally arrived? Maybe, like her music, someday we’ll discover what happened to her.
Or, maybe she died homeless and alone ‘neath a pile of rags.