To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse: 1 of Pitchfork's 10 Best Music Books of 2023

Available
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

CHOSEN BY PITCHFORK AS ONE OF THE TEN BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF 2023


ONE OF LOUDER THAN WAR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR


SHORTLISTED FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD

INCLUDED IN PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'S SEVEN BOOKS FROM 2023 YOU SHOULDN'T OVERLOOK

"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." - Ken Burns

"Nothing short of remarkable." - Publishers Weekly

"A massive and fascinating feat." - MOJO Magazine

The true story of Connie Converse - a mid-century New York singer and songwriter, who mysteriously disappeared - and one writer's quest to understand her life.

When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard a Connie Converse recording, he was convinced she could not be real. Her music was too out of place for the 1950s to make sense - a singer who bridged the gap between traditional Americana, pop standards, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.

Fishman 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, Converse 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.

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, of a visionary intellect and talent, and a woman who fiercely strove for independence when the odds were against her. Who was this overlooked trailblazer, how did she come to make such complex and arresting music, and can Fishman discover what happened to the artist who disappeared?

Product Details

Price
£14.99  £14.24
Publisher
Headline Publishing Group
Publish Date
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781035408887

Earn By Promoting Books

Earn money by sharing your favourite books through our Affiliate programme.

Become an Affiliate