Sixto Rodriguez
What failed
His two albums sold few copies in the United States and neither charted. His label dropped him two weeks before Christmas in 1971.
What happened next
He worked in demolition and on production lines in Detroit on a low income, and ran for public office several times without winning. Australian promoters tracked him down and he toured there in 1979 and 1981. He only learned in 1997, when his daughter found a fan website, that his records had been enormous in South Africa the whole time.
The point
The American verdict on his records was accurate for the United States and wrong almost everywhere else. Two Australian tours, in 1979 and 1981, showed him the work had landed somewhere; when the calls stopped he went back to manual labour, and he learned what the records had done in South Africa only in 1997.
The sequence
2 documented failures, shown with the successes in between. Every entry carries its own source — the wins are part of the record, and leaving them out is how these stories get distorted.
- 1970-1971
Two albums, and almost nobody buys them.
- 1971
Dropped by his label a fortnight before Christmas.
- 1972-1997
Twenty-five years of demolition and production-line work.
- 1997
His daughter finds a website devoted to him. He had no idea he was famous in South Africa.
- 2013
Searching for Sugar Man wins the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Sources
- Sixto Rodriguez (Wikipedia)
However, both sold few copies in the U.S. and he was dropped by Sussex two weeks before Christmas 1971, and Sussex itself closed in 1975.
- Searching for Sugar Man (Wikipedia) — on what the film leaves out
The film omits that Rodriguez was successful in Australia in the 1970s and toured there in 1979 and 1981.
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