When Connie Converse, the ‘female Bob Dylan,’ lived in NYC | Hacker News Reader

When Connie Converse, the ‘female Bob Dylan,’ lived in NYC

nytimes.com

79 pointstintinnabula23 comments

Been listening to these songs for quite a while now - amazing songwriting. A mysterious, tragic tale, too.

On Spotify there is an album called “Connie’s Piano Songs” that purport to be through-composed (as in, pen to paper notated music) art songs. I’ve unsuccessfully tried to find more info about them and there don’t seem to be any scores are available. I’d be interested if anyone has any more information about them or has the scores. Part of me wonders if they are actually songs about Connnie Converse and not composed by her…

Fishman discusses this in his recently released book (which is highly recommended, although it left me a bit depressed.)

Basically, he got the music from her brother, and organized some singers and recorded it. There are no known recordings of Converse herself performing them.

tldr; Connie Converse wrote the music/lyrics, but “Connie’s Piano Songs” are performed by other artists.

Thanks, I see that there is more info in this article too. I mistakenly thought this post was an older article that I had already read about her.

This link is in the article, but it sure makes for a perfect soundtrack while reading.

https://connieconverse.bandcamp.com/album/how-sad-how-lovely

If you buy the album, who are you supporting, exactly?

I hope the above isn't considered a rude question, but treated as a real question. Who owns these recordings, and how did they get ownership? If I had to guess, I'd say the copyright started with whoever had the belongings (and tapes) she left behind, likely a family member, and they probably went into partnership with whoever shopped the tapes (and story) around to record companies.

One of my favorite CDs; I wish people still wrote music like that.

I'm guessing the rights to the recordings belong to her brother Phil and/or the two people who produced the album.

From the Bandcamp page:

  words and music by Connie Converse
  recorded by Connie Converse & Gene Deitch
  restored and produced by Daniel Dzula & David Herman

From the article:

> It wasn’t until 2004, when an N.Y.U. graduate student heard a 1954 bootleg recording of Ms. Converse on WNYC, that her music started to get any of the attention and respect that had evaded her some 50 years before.

> The student, Dan Dzula, and his friend, David Herman, were spellbound by what they heard. They dug up more archival recordings, and assembled the 2009 album, “How Sad, How Lovely,” a compilation of songs that sound as though they could have been written today. It has been streamed over 16 million times on Spotify.

I found an interview with these two, who set up a record label that published the album.

The Connie Converse Double Album That Never Got Crowd-Funded - https://medium.com/the-awl/the-connie-converse-double-album-...

That's interesting. Since her fate is known, it's possible these people are not the true rights holders of the music, but I guess if no one is complaining... Thanks for the info!

Some parallels with the rediscovery of Nick Drake a few years back. Wonder how many more of these gems are buried in the river of history.

>Some parallels with the rediscovery of Nick Drake a few years back.

How long ago are we talking here? To my mind, he's enjoyed a healthy dose of posthumous popularity for a few decades.

That's fair, in my mind he had been rediscovered somewhere in the 2010s, but it looks like that might have happened much earlier.

Phil Ochs isn't buried, but he's really not as well-known as he ought to be; the story about Dylan "throwing him out of his limo" for being too political for Bob's taste says a lot about Dylan.

“How Sad How Lovely” is such a beautiful album. I hum its songs to myself regularly. So glad her work has been preserved at least to some extent.

Bob Dylan is a meaningless comparison, and an injustice to the wonderful Connie Converse.

another woman that seems almost forgotten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Henske

Another lost (not missing, just unnoticed) artist whose discovery happened about the same time as Converse is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylle_Baier

See also Tia Blake for a younger lady who popped up, did a fantastic album, then more less disappeared after a couple one off appearances. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tia_Blake

A non paywall alternative:

https://www.theawl.com/2010/08/the-story-of-connie-converse/

It's good to have more insight, but the archive.is link at the top comment is the non-paywall version of the main article.

This article has more information, like how she got on TV, while the first link says they don't know.

Understood (“more insight”), I mentioned due to the paywall comment. It was meant to be purely informative, not comparing content of the articles.

This one is much better than the NYT article. Also, it embeds some of her songs to listen to while reading.

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