Sixto Rodriguez, the Mexican-American singer-songwriter who languished in obscurity for decades before his brilliant music was rediscovered and chronicled in the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man, died on Tuesday. He was 81.
Rodriguez’s death was announced Wednesday on his official website. “It is with great sadness that we at Sugarman.org announce that Sixto Diaz Rodriguez has passed away earlier today,” the statement read. No cause of death was provided, but Rodriguez reportedly dealt with health issues in recent years.
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.
The rest of the world learned the Rodriguez story in 2012 when Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul released Searching for Sugar Man, a documentary that told his story largely from the perspective of the South African fans who kept his music alive and found him in America despite a persistent urban legend that he was dead. The unique framing device captivated audiences and critics. (It was criticized, however, for failing to tell the story of his Australian revival.)
“Why did everyone think Citizen Kane was a fantastic movie?” Bendjelloul asked Rolling Stone in 2013. “It’s because it was really smart. It didn’t tell the story about this rich guy. It told the story of a journalist who is trying to tell a story about a rich guy. That was the thing that hooked me in the beginning, that this story would be different.”
Sixto Diaz Rodriguez grew up in a working class family in Detroit, Michigan. Inspired by Bob Dylan and other singer-songwriters of the Sixties, he began playing coffeehouses around the city as a teenager. In 1967, he released two folk singles that went nowhere under the name Rod Riguez. In the years that followed, he took whatever gigs he could find around town and eventually landed a record deal with Sussex, around the time the label also signed Bill Withers.
“Honest to God, I thought this guy was going to be huge,” Sussex founder Clarence Avant told Rolling Stone in 2013. “He’s one of the there greatest artists I’ve ever worked with, and that includes Bill Withers. He was a fucking genius.”
Rodriguez’s debut LP, Cold Fact, recorded over just a few weeks in late 1969, is a work of staggering brilliance. It reflects the grittiness of working class Detroit (“Inner City Blues”), the political turmoil of the Vietnam era (“This Is Not a Song, It’s an Outburst: Or, the Establishment Blues”), late Sixties drug culture (“Sugar Man”), and his own romantic confusion (“I Wonder”). The high point is “Crucify Your Mind,” where he pairs Dylanesque stream-of-conscious lyrics with a lush arrangement straight out of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.
“Was it a huntsman or a player/That made you pay the cost,” he sings in words that are tattooed into the minds of generations of South African fans. “That now assumes relaxed positions/And prostitutes your loss?/Were you tortured by your own thirst In those pleasures that you seek/That made you Tom the curious/That makes you James the weak?”
Despite high hopes by Avant, the album disappeared. The follow-up, Coming From Reality, was equally unsuccessful. Rodriguez vanished from the music scene entirely, focusing largely on his growing family and finding ways to scrounge a living around Detroit. Unbeknownst to him, a shipment of unsold copies of Cold Fact made its way to Australia. When a DJ in Sydney played “Sugar Man,” the records began selling in huge numbers.
“Every single one of my friends had Cold Fact,” Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst told Rolling Stone in 2013. “We’d play Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, Billy Joel’s first album, and Cold Fact.”
In 1979, Australian concert promoter Michael Coppel tracked him down and booked a series of shows across the country. At a stop in Sydney, he played to 15,000 fans. ““He was just stunned by what we put together for him,” Coppel told Billboard at the time. “He had never played a concert before, just bars and clubs.”
But the mania faded after one more tour in 1981. “I thought it was the highlight of my career,” Rodriguez said in 2013. “I had achieved that epic mission. Not much happened after that. No calls or anything.”
The love for Rodriquez in South Africa eclipsed anything that took place in Australia, but most fans believed he was dead. It wasn’t until the advent of the internet that a group of fans were able to pool their resources and realize he was alive and well in Detroit. The story captivated Bendjelloul, but he had trouble getting Rodriquez to agree to an interview.
“His kids told me I could probably meet him, but I shouldn’t get my hopes up about an interview,” Bendjelloul told Rolling Stone in 2013. “I went to Detroit every year for four years. He didn’t agree to be interviewed until my third visit. I think he only changed his mind because he felt kind of sorry for us. He saw how hard we were working and was like, ‘I think I better help these guys.’”
It was a wise decision. The huge success of Searching for Sugar Man, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film in 2013, finally broke Rodriguez in his native country. He started playing clubs and tiny theaters, but once the movie took off, he was able to headline Radio City Music Hall and eventually arenas like Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. He even played “Crucify Your Mind” on David Letterman’s TV show with an orchestra.
The concerts earned him more money than he’d ever seen in his life, including $700,000 for a five-night stand in South Africa, but it did little to change his lifestyle. “He lives a very Spartan life,” his daughter Regan told Rolling Stone. “I almost want to say Amish. Most of the money he’s just giving away to friends and family. I really wish he’d spend it on himself.”
He didn’t even watch the Academy Awards when Searching for Sugar Man won. “We just came in the day before from South Africa,” Rodriguez told Rolling Stone. “My daughter Sandra called to tell me. I don’t have TV service, anyway.”
Following his Oscar-fueled success, Rodriguez flirted with the idea of finally cutting a third record. But his focus remained on touring. He played gigs until the beginning of the pandemic, even as glaucoma slowly robbed him of his vision and forced him to rely on family members and others to help get him around.
When Rolling Stone visited with Rodriguez in 2013, he was still coming to terms with his newfound fame in America, and prepping for gigs at two of the biggest festivals in the world: Coachella and Glastonbury. “I have a lot of commitments, and the list keeps growing,” he said. “We have to strike while the iron is hot.”