A biography of the mythic singer songwriter Connie Converse, who mysteriously disappeared after recording her debut album and was never seen again.
When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too out of place for the 1950s to make sense – a singer who bridged the gap between traditional Americana and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
Howard was determined to know more about this artist and how she slipped through the cracks of music history but there was one problem: in 1974, at the age of fifty, Connie simply drove off one day and was never heard from again.
After a dozen years of research, Fishman expertly weaves a narrative of her life and music, and of how it has come to speak to him as both an artist and a person. He discovers fans who Connie’s music touched deeply and still remember the lyrics to songs they’d heard only once or twice over 50 years ago.
It is by turns a hopeful, inspiring, melancholy, and chilling story of dark family secrets, taciturn New England traditions, a portrait of 1950s Greenwich Village, and of a woman who fiercely strove for independence when the odds were against her. Ultimately, Fishman shows that Connie was a significant outsider artist, a missing link pre-empting the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever.
(P) 2023 Penguin Audio
When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too out of place for the 1950s to make sense – a singer who bridged the gap between traditional Americana and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
Howard was determined to know more about this artist and how she slipped through the cracks of music history but there was one problem: in 1974, at the age of fifty, Connie simply drove off one day and was never heard from again.
After a dozen years of research, Fishman expertly weaves a narrative of her life and music, and of how it has come to speak to him as both an artist and a person. He discovers fans who Connie’s music touched deeply and still remember the lyrics to songs they’d heard only once or twice over 50 years ago.
It is by turns a hopeful, inspiring, melancholy, and chilling story of dark family secrets, taciturn New England traditions, a portrait of 1950s Greenwich Village, and of a woman who fiercely strove for independence when the odds were against her. Ultimately, Fishman shows that Connie was a significant outsider artist, a missing link pre-empting the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever.
(P) 2023 Penguin Audio
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Reviews
Musician, culture writer, and playwright Fishman's extraordinary trek through the life and works of Connie Converse is a laudable endeavor... the author constructs an emotional narrative ... [To Anyone Who Ever Asks is] an interesting foray into Converse's glimmer of fame and sad subsequent neglect.
[Fishman's] enthusiasm and diligence is infectious . . . Through the obsession of such dedicated fans as Fishman, Connie Converse will find a larger audience.
The mystery of American composer Connie Converse's disappearance in 1974 is ongoing, and she may be lost forever. But her spectacular work has been rescued and elevated to a marvelous level by Howard Fishman. Her music belongs to an America that barely knows it exists.
Connie Converse's songs are a revelation, finely wrought, wry, as beautiful as they are weird. I'm so grateful this enigmatic writer and her catalogue are being explored and celebrated, in this book and beyond.
[To Anyone Who Ever Asks] is the grandly researched portrait of a talent who didn't get her due, a kind of worst-case study of why this indignity remains a brutally common occurrence ... [it]is simultaneously the record of an obsession and its ultimate payoff. It's hard to think of any book that grants such loving attention to an artist who has otherwise been denied it.
Gripping and searching... Mr. Fishman's thoughtful and deeply researched book provides a far bolder jolt than any cover version can provide. It may yet help find for Converse what the author proposes-a place at 'the table of great American artists and thinkers'.
Packed with detective-level details about a Renaissance woman whose work passed through this world all but unnoticed.
A massive and fascinating feat.
Uncovers a haunting picture of a troubled life.
It takes a great journalist to find the stories behind the mysteries we carry. Howard Fishman has done that with his superb examination of Connie Converse.
Nothing short of remarkable.
So powerful...A totemic accomplishment and indispensable guide. The exhaustive care with which Fishman approaches his subject is itself hypnotic, even devastating.