A book review by John Lingan in The Washington Post.
In the words of Howard Fishman, whose biography of Converse, “To Anyone Who Ever Asks,” culminates his 12-year odyssey to understand this beguiling talent, her work exists “out of time, out of music history altogether."
The book by Fishman, a musician and New Yorker contributor, appears to be an eBook only. Amazon.
This is the mesmerizing story of an enigmatic life. When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice on a recording, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense—a singer who seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
And then there was the bizarre legend about Connie Converse that had become the prevailing narrative of her life: that in 1974, at the age of fifty, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Could this have been true? Who was Connie Converse, really?