Connie Converse

Elizabeth Eaton "Connie" Converse (born August 3, 1924) was an American musician active in New York City in the 1950s. Her work is among the earliest known recordings of the singer-songwriter genre of music. Converse left her family home in 1974 in search of a new life and was never heard from again. Her music was largely unknown until it was featured on a 2004 radio show, and released on the album How Sad, How Lovely in March 2009. Biography: Elizabeth Eaton Converse was born in Laconia, New Hampshire, in 1924. She grew up in Concord as the middle child in a strict Baptist family; her father was a minister. She attended Concord High School, where she was valedictorian and won eight academic awards. She was awarded an academic scholarship to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. After two years' study, she left the College and moved to New York City. During the 1950s, she worked for the Academy Photo Offset printing house in New York's Flatiron District and lived in Greenwich Village. She started calling herself Connie, a nickname she had acquired in New York. She began writing songs and performing them for friends, accompanying herself on guitar. Her music came to the notice of animator and amateur recording engineer Gene Deitch, who had made tape recordings of John Lee Hooker and Pete Seeger in the 1940s. Deitch made a number of tape recordings of Converse in the kitchen of his house in Hastings-on-Hudson in the mid-1950s. But she failed to attract any commercial interest in her music. Her only public performance was a brief television appearance in 1954 on "The Morning Show" on CBS with Walter Cronkite, which Deitch helped to arrange. In 1961, she left New York for Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her brother Philip was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. She worked in a secretarial job, and then as Managing Editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1963. Her only musical involvement continued to be playing for friends at parties. By 1973, Converse was burnt out and depressed. Her colleagues and friends pooled their money to finance a six-months' trip to England for her. The journal, which meant so much to her, had left Michigan for Yale at the end of 1972, after being "auctioned off" without her knowledge. She was facing the need for major surgery. In August 1974, she wrote a series of letters to her family and friends, in which she mentioned her intention to make a new life somewhere else. By the time the letters were delivered, she had packed her belongings in her Volkswagen Beetle and driven away, never to be heard from again. In January 2004, Gene Deitch – by then 80 years old and living in Prague since 1959 – was invited by New York music historian David Garland to appear on his WNYC radio show Spinning on Air. Deitch played some of his own recordings, including one of Converse's songs, "One by One". Two of Garland's listeners, Dan Dzula and David Herman, were inspired to track down any additional recordings of Converse. They found two sources for Converse's music: Deitch's collection in Prague, and a filing cabinet in Ann Arbor containing recordings Converse had sent to her brother, Philip, in the late 1950s. In March 2009, How Sad, How Lovely, containing 17 songs by Converse, was released by Lau derette Recordings. That same month, WNYC's Spinning on Air broadcast an hourlong special about the life and music Connie Converse. The show's host, David Garland, also explored the mystery surrounding Converse's disappearance with recordings from Converse's brother, Philip Converse, and readings of her letters by actor Amber Benson. In 2015, How Sad, How Lovely was released as an 18 track vinyl by Squirrel Thing Recordings in partnership with the Captured Tracks label. The album has received favorable reviews, including by Los Angeles Times music critic Randall Roberts, who wrote "Few reissues of the past decade have struck me with more continued, joyous affection as “How Sad, How Lovely". The Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster describes the album as "making a deep and marvellous connection between lyric and song that allows us to enter the world of an extraordinary woman living in mid-twentieth-century New York." Legacy: Apart from her 1954 appearance on "The Morning Show" and a performance of her music in 1961 by folksinger Susan Reed at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York, Converse's music was not available to the public until it resurfaced in 2004. Since the 2009 release of her album, however, Converse's life and music have been the subject of news reports around the world. In addition to the mystery surrounding her disappearance, many of these articles focus on the content and style of Converse's music - and the possibility that she may be the earliest performer in the singer-songwriter genre. According to music historian David Garland, "Converse wrote and sang back in the 1950s, long before singer-songwriter was a recognized category or style. But everything we value in singer-songwriters today - personal perspective, insight, originality, empathy, intelligence, wry humor - was abundant in her music." Others cite the feminine experience often explored in her lyrics, as well as the themes of sexuality and individualism found in her songs as the reason Converse's music was ahead of its time. The Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster, co-founder of The Go-Betweens, describes the album as "making a deep and marvellous connection between lyric and song that allows us to enter the world of an extraordinary woman living in mid-twentieth-century New York." Converse's life and music have served as the inspiration for numerous contemporary artistic works, including a play by Howard Fishman, who also produced the album "Connie's Piano Songs" featuring music written, but never recorded by Connie Converse.[19] Other works inspired by Converse include the modern dance piece "Empty Pockets" by John Heginbotham, which was performed at the Miller Theater in 2015, British singer Nat Johnson's "Roving Woman" tribute performances, as well as tribute performances of Converse's music by Jean Rohe and Diane Cluck as part of the "Spinning on Air" 25th anniversary special.