Finding Sugar Man

 

A few months ago, a young musician named Zach Montana posted a video on TikTok of himself reacting to a song that was playing in his car: it happened to be an unreleased 1970’s disco/funk tune that his father had written, recorded — and was singing. It turned out that said father, Curly Smith, had a storied career as a rock musician and had failed to release his disco work back in the day. In any event, that video became viral: within days, millions of people had seen it, including well established singers and musicians, praising the song. A few things happened following that: the father/son duo re-released the track, went on TV, gathered many more millions streams and a 70-something veteran is now having himself a second career as FireCityFunk.

A similar story happened to another musician over a comparable period of time — only with even crazier ups and downs. Sixto “Sugar Man” Rodriguez has a story so incredible that it got made into a documentary which received an oscar back in 2012 (10 years ago already!). Rodriguez was a Mexican-American Detroit native who wanted to make it as a folk singer at a time Detroit was known for its Motown sound — aka soul music. His style was in fact a mixture of folk, rock, pop with a tint of soul, especially in arrangements. For his debut album, the 1970 Cold Fact, did draw inspiration from its geographical neighbours. Released on Sussex, the label founded by the Black Godfather Clarence Avant himself, it sadly did not succeed in finding an audience. A follow up, the 1971 Coming From Reality, didn’t fare much better and the label dropped him before a third album could be produced.

Which is a shame for many reasons: for one, Rodriguez could be regarded as the missing link between Bob Dylan and Marvin Gaye, an incredibly soulful balladeer whose lyrics tell a history seldom told in folk, that of long immigrated Latinos who still very much struggle to get integrated within American society. At least struggled: those scenes took place over half a century ago, we hope things have improved since… The reason we know about any of this is, despite the lack of success Rodriguez’s work had in the US at the time, his records fairly randomly found their way to Australia and South Africa… and became classics over there. Especially in South Africa, where he was considered an anti-apartheid icon, outselling the King himself! But he didn’t find out about it until the late 1990’s: incredibly, the records sold without people knowing anything about their author. The story went that Rodriguez had long passed away…

The 2012 oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man follows the search by two South Africans (one, incredibly, named Stephen “Sugar” Segerman) of the singer’s whereabouts. They eventually come into contact with him, living a humble life in the US, having toured a few times in Australia, but never to the point of making it a full time occupation, working in construction and other menial jobs instead. But, as the documentary suggests, always in a very unique way: he would reportedly show up on construction sites wearing three-piece suits. Try as you might, you could not take the showman out of the man… Since the late 1990’s, as the identity of Rodriguez was being re-established, he finally started getting recognition in his home country. It took over a decade more and the documentary for him to become a global star — at age 70…