re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

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Sixto Rodriguez, the Seventies rocker known as Rodriguez whose music enjoyed a renaissance after the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary 'Searching for Sugar Man,' has died at age 81.

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Rodriguez only released two studio albums: 1970’s Cold Fact and 1971’s Coming From Reality. They made almost no impact when they were released in America, but became enormously popular in Australia and South Africa in the latter part of the decade. He came to Australia in 1979 and 1981 for concerts where he was treated like a God, sharing a bill with megastars Midnight Oil at one point. 

“The man himself seemed almost embarrassed onstage,” noted Billboard in a review of a 1979 show. “He spoke no more than a dozen short lines throughout each show. When returning to the stage for an encore at his first Sydney show, he mumbled emotionally to his audience, ‘Eight years later … and this happens. I don’t believe it.’”

What he wouldn’t learn for years was that South African fans also latched onto his music, where his politically charged songs would spread across the country. When a group of dogged South African fans tracked him down in 1998, he finally learned the truth. He played a series of enormous South African concerts that year and continued to tour there throughout the 2000s.

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