Connie Converse wrote and recorded a batch of surreal, imaginative, beautiful and sometimes downright eerie songs in the 1950’s. She was championed by recording engineer Gene Deitch who recorded her in his home and circulated her tapes eventually landing her only television appearance on Walter Cronkite’s “Morning Show”. Her work had not been commercially released until recently (http://connieconverse.bandcamp.com/) In 1974 she wrote goodbye letters to her family and friends, drove away in her Volkswagon Beetle and was never heard or seen from again
When I first asked Vashti Bunyan if she would grant me an interview for this project she responded,
“I would be honoured to be included in your book, truly. It sounds like a great project and I agree there are many many women who for one reason or another were overlooked in their time.
One was Connie Converse who was writing wonderful songs in the 50s. I don’t know if you know about her – but I heard she was told by her contemporaries at the university where she worked that her songs were ‘hardly Mozart’ and that this was enough to silence her. Happily her songs were recorded. They are beautiful.”
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