Rodriguez (musician)

Sixto Díaz Rodriguez (2007)

Sixto Díaz Rodríguez (born July 10, 1942 in Detroit ) is an American singer-songwriter . After two studio albums , which were not very well received in his home country, he retired to private life in 1971 as a modest construction worker. He only learned late that his music was enjoying great popularity in Australia and in South Africa, which had been isolated for a long time by the apartheid regime . The circumstances and background of his success in South Africa from 1998 are also the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man (2012), which finally made Rodriguez internationally known.

Origin and musical beginnings

The son of a working-class family of Mexican immigrants made his living after graduating from high school by performing in bars in his hometown. In the mid-1960s he was discovered there by Harry Balk (1925-2016) from Impact Records. In 1967 he recorded his first single I'll Slip Away . After Balk moved to Motown , studio musicians Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore recommended that he contact Clarence Avant, who had just started his label Sussex Records. Together with Coffey and Theodore and accompanied by the Funk Brothers , Rodriguez recorded a folk album with self-written material, which was released in 1970 under the title Cold Fact on Sussex Records. Despite the positive reviews, the album was not a commercial success. In 1971 Rodriguez recorded a second album in London under the direction of Steve Rowland, which also flopped. He then turned his back on the music business and worked temporarily as a social worker as well as at a gas station and on construction .

Success abroad and comeback in Australia

From the mid-1970s, Rodriguez became a cult star in South Africa , Botswana , what was then Rhodesia , Australia and New Zealand , although the first edition of his debut album for the international market only sold a few hundred times. After his song Sugar Man had been played regularly on the radio from mid-1972, a best-of record called At His Best was released in 1977 on the Australian label Blue Goose . The album went gold in Australia . The debut album was then re-released and has now sold around 40,000 times. Since the licensing was done through his former label, which he had canceled due to its poor success, Rodriguez did not find out about the sales figures nor did he receive royalties .

It was not until 1979 that an organizer brought him to Australia for a series of concerts. The sold out shows had a total of around 30,000 spectators. The concert album Alive , released only in Australia, was created on two of these appearances . In 1981 Rodriguez returned to Australia for a tour with the band Midnight Oil . Then he withdrew again into private life. In 1981 he graduated from Wayne State University with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and until 1989 he ran several times as a candidate for political office to no avail.

Search for Rodriguez and second comeback in South Africa

In the late 1970s, his albums were particularly successful as copies in South Africa, which was shaped by apartheid . There his texts were interpreted as protest songs, especially by the young people . For them, Rodriguez was a replacement for stars like Jimi Hendrix or Bob Dylan . The international isolation of the country contributed to the fact that almost no information was known about the artist himself. This resulted in various rumors about his death, among other things. He is said to have shot himself on stage or died as a result of drug abuse or depression. In any case, his South African fans agreed that Rodriguez had died under unknown circumstances.

Rodriguez only found out about his undreamt-of popularity when he was tracked down by the South African fan Stephen Segerman. In 1996, on the occasion of the re-release of Coming from Reality in South Africa, he had called in the text accompanying the booklet to the CD to reveal the secret of Rodriguez's fate. Segerman switched to a website in 1997 and was finally able to find Rodriguez in 1998 - according to the film, because one of his daughters reported on the website. In 1998 Rodriguez gave six successful concerts in South Africa, followed by concert tours to Sweden , Namibia , Great Britain , the Netherlands and Australia until 2007 and through South Africa again in 2001 and 2005. Early 2000s was his music by David Holmes rediscovered its 2002 published Sampler Come Get It, I Got It the piece Sugar Man contains. In 2008 Rodriguez's debut album Cold Fact was re-released worldwide, followed by Coming from Reality .

Film adaptation of the search and international success

The musician Tonia Selley, who was also the percussionist and background singer for the band Big Sky on Rodriguez's first tour in South Africa, is the director of a first documentary film: Dead Men Don't Tour: Rodriguez in South Africa 1998 , which premiered on South African television in 2001 . In numerous interview sequences, the film tells the search of the two South African journalists for Rodriguez, accompanies the singer and his family in South Africa and documents three of the six concerts on the tour.

The Swedish documentary filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul met Rodriguez for the first time in 2006 and, after years of research, published his documentary Searching for Sugar Man in 2012 , in which he traced the two South Africans' search for Rodriguez. The film was named Best Documentary at the 2013 Academy Awards . The soundtrack of the same name for the film reached number 76 on the US charts . In 2012, the re-release of Cold Fact reached number 86 on the US Billboard 200.

The release of the documentary also led to greater notoriety in North America and Europe in 2012. In May 2013, his former Detroit University awarded him an honorary doctorate in the Doctor of Humane Letters . In 2013 it was learned that Rodriguez had written 30 new songs that he wanted to have set to music. At the end of 2016 he went on tour through Australia.

Litigation about profit sharing

In 2014, Rodriguez's discoverer, Balk, filed a lawsuit in which he argued that at the time Cold Fact and Coming From Reality were released , Rodriguez was still bound by an exclusive five-year contract as a songwriter for Balk's record company Gomba, which was signed in 1966 for a period of five years . Clarence Avant wanted to conceal this fact at Sussex Records by illegally registering Rodriguez 'brother Jesus Rodriguez and the pseudonym "Sixth Prince" as authors of most of the pieces of music. Balk demanded compensation for lost royalties and said that he only learned of Rodriguez's authorship through the film Searching for Sugar Man . Avant then sued Rodriguez in the same proceedings because he had given false information about his existing contract before the albums were produced. Harry Balk died on December 3, 2016, before the completion of the proceedings, at the age of 91.

Trivia

Mojo magazine voted the song Sugar Man at number 34 on their 100 Greatest Drug Songs Ever list in December 2002 .

Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1970	Cold Fact	DE78 (1 week) DE	-	CH20 (2 weeks) CH	UK39 silver (2 weeks)UK	US78 (18 weeks) US	First published: March 1970
1971	Coming from Reality	-	-	CH36 (2 weeks) CH	UK73 (1 week) UK	US161 (4 weeks) US	First publication: November 1971 Re-publication in 1976 as After the Fact
2012	Searching for Sugar Man (Soundtrack)	-	AT22 (15 weeks) AT	CH10 (45 weeks) CH	UK26th silver (6 weeks)UK	US76 (14 weeks) US	First published: July 24, 2012

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Live albums

• 1981: Alive
• 1998: Live Fact
• 2016: Rodriguez Rocks Live in Australia

Compilations

• 1977: At His Best
• 1982: The Best of
• 2005: Sugarman: The Best of
• 2005: All the Facts (3 CD, 2009 reissue as 2-CD version)
• 2013: Coffret Rodriguez

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
2014	Hate Street Dialogue The Wanderings of the Avener	DE82 (2 weeks) DE	-	CH41 (3 weeks) CH	-	-	First published: December 2014 with The Avener

More singles

year	title	B side	Remarks
1967	I'll slip away	You'd Like to Admit It	as Rod Riguez, first published in August 1967 in the USA
1970	Inner City Blues	Forget It	First published in the USA
	To whom It May concern	I think of you	First published in 1970 in the USA, reissue in 1972 in Brazil
1972	Sugar Man	Inner City Blues	First published in Italy in 1972, reissue in Australia in 1977
	Sugar Man	Viaggio Di Un Poeta ( I Dik Dik )
1973	Halfway Up The Stairs	It started out so nice	First published in 1973 in Australia
1978	Climb Up on My Music	To whom It May concern	First published in 1978 in Australia
2002	Sugar Man	Tom Cat ( Muddy Waters )	First published in the UK in April 2002
2004	Be'cause (Zimbrowski vs Rodriguez)	Arbar (Will Flisk and Jak Jackson)
2010	Inner City Blues	I'm Gonna Live Till I Die	Live, first released April 2010 in the US
2012	Crucify Your Mind	-	Flexi
2012	I wonder	Sugar Man
2015	I'll slip away	I'll Slip Away (Charles Bradley & The Menahan Street Band)

Video albums

• 2012: Searching For Sugar Man (UK:platinum)

literature

• Craig Bartholomew Strydom and Stephen "Sugar" Segerman: Sugar Man: Life, Death and Resurrection of Sixto Rodriguez. Ullstein, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-8437-1174-6 .

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Rodriguez Is Australian Cult . In: Billboard Magazine . April 7, 1979, p. 89 f .
2. ↑ ^{a b} About Rodriguez, short biography on the artist's official website, accessed on March 13, 2017 (English)
3. ↑ ^{a b} R. J. Cubarrubia: 'Sugar Man' Sixto Rodriguez Awarded Honorary Degree, in: Rolling Stone from May 10, 2013, accessed on March 13, 2017 (English)
4. ↑ ^{a b} Christoph Dallach: Folk-Pop-Legend Rodriguez. Dead heroes live longer. Spiegel Online , October 26, 2012, accessed October 26, 2012 . 
5. ^ Quint Kik: Rodriguez Biography. Allmusic , accessed on October 26, 2012 . 
6. ↑ Manohla Dargis: Rock Musician Shrouded in Mystery of What Might Have Been. Malik Bendjelloul's 'Searching for Sugar Man'. New York Times , July 26, 2012, accessed October 26, 2012 . 
7. ↑ Rodriguez - The Magic, on SugarMan.org (English)
8. ↑ Dead Men Don't Tour - Rodriguez in South Africa 1998 (TV Documentary) , on YouTube, accessed on March 14, 2017 (English)
9. ↑ The wise man from the building . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 29, 2012, p. 14
10. ↑ Sean Michaels: Rodriguez set to return to studio after 42-year absence. The Guardian , accessed March 18, 2013 . 
11. ↑ Rodriguez kicks off his 2016 Australian Tour in Brisbane . The Sydney Morning Herald , November 12, 2016
12. ↑ Eriq Gardner: 'Searching for Sugar Man' Star's Amazing Journey Erupts Into Fraud Lawsuit (Exclusive) . In: Hollywood Reporter , May 2, 2014; accessed on March 14, 2017 (English)
13. ↑ Gomba Music Inc. v. Avant, in: Leagle, April 15, 2016, accessed March 14, 2017
14. ^ US District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division: Gomba Music Inc. v. Clarence Avant & Interior Music Corp. December 6, 2016; accessed on March 14, 2017 (English)
15. ^ Susan Whitall: Detroit 'godfather' of music Harry Balk dies . In: The Detroit News , December 4, 2016; accessed on March 14, 2017 (English)
16. ↑ MOJO's the 100 Greatest Drug Songs Ever on rateyourmusic.com
17. ↑ ^{a b} Chart sources: AT CH UK US , accessed on June 13, 2014.
18. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK

Web links

Commons : Sixto Rodriguez  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Rodriguez-music.com - official website (English)
• SugarMan.org - the official Stephen Segerman and Brian Currin fan website
• Rodriguez in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Rodriguez at Discogs (English)
• Sixto Rodriguez at laut.de