Caught the end of this programme this afternoon on BBC Radio 4.

Dreaming of Connie Converse


"Poet Emily Berry explores the music and mystery of Connie Converse.

Connie Converse was ahead of her time. She began writing songs on guitar in New York City in 1949. She wrote of loneliness and rebellion, of ambition, judgement and desire -- in a manner rarely heard from women at that time: witty yet melancholy, defiant but ethereal.

Sitting somewhere between George Gershwin and Joni Mitchell, Connie Converse was a singer-songwriter before that phrase had currency. There was no one else like her.

Perhaps that's why she never really found an audience. She left New York City in 1961, moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan and gave up writing songs.

And then she disappeared.

At least, that's the way the story is often told.

In 1974 Connie Converse wrote letters to friends and family suggesting that she was leaving Ann Arbor to start afresh elsewhere. She drove away in her Volkswagen Beetle and was never heard from again.

There were apparent sightings over the years. A private investigator was no help. Her car was never found.

Almost everything we know about Connie Converse comes from a large filing cabinet, left behind at her brother's house after she drove away, but not thoroughly examined until his retirement many years later. It presents a carefully organised window onto Connie Converse's life: letters, pictures, essays, political activism, mementoes and recordings, all indexed and itemised. She wanted to disappear, but not without leaving a legacy.

In the filing cabinet was an explanatory letter, which begins: "Let me go."

Half a century later, many people can't let her go.

Her songs of wit and vulnerability were out of time in the 1950s but have found a listenership today. She's a cult artist of the streaming era.

Emily Berry dreams about Connie Converse in the company of biographer Howard Fishman, musician Emma-Lee Moss (formerly known as Emmy the Great) and poet Jack Underwood. Including extracts from an interview with Philip and Jean Converse by Dan Dzula and David Herman.

Includes Playboy of the Western World performed by Margot, Jo Equality Lampert, and Emma-Lee Moss. Recorded live at the Hum, Manhattan Inn, Brooklyn 2016. And Trouble performed by Jack Underwood.

Howard Fishman's biography of Connie Converse is called To Anyone Who Ever Asks: the Life, Music and Mystery of Connie Converse.

With grateful thanks to Dan Dzula.

Connie Converse photograph courtesy of the Musick Group / Heroic Cities LLC."