{"id":7564,"date":"2026-04-01T12:39:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T11:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7564"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:39:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T11:39:53","slug":"shindig-174-connie-converse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7564","title":{"rendered":"Shindig! #174 \u2013 Connie Converse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Was CONNIE CONVERSE the first singer-songwriter? The mysterious artist\u2019s music, which chronicled \u201cinfidelities, forbidden relationships, deaths, longings and socially unacceptable behaviours\u201d during an era when such things were frowned upon, and took 55 years to be released, certainly suggests so. The more you investigate Converse\u2019s story, the further the mystery deepens. <\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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CAMILLA AISA reveals the layers behind the most anachronistic artist of all-time.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI wouldn’t bother except that optimistic people keep making appointments for me\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

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Converse had picked up a guitar a few years earlier. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking up chords for guitar in the back of The People’s Song Book,\u201d her diary notes. \u201cI find I had figured most of them out by myself, without thinking about their names. I used to think a guitar was a vulgar and unpleasing instrument. But if treated properly, it rises above the realm of the musical cliche. And with a good song, even cliches sound good.\u201d It didn\u2019t take long for her, until then an aspiring novelist, to start composing her own songs. The first came in 1949, a poem by AE Housman, \u2018With Rue My Heart Is Laden\u2019, set to music in 42 short seconds. Converse would soon turn to writing original lyrics for her songs, starting with \u2018Down This Road\u2019, a slice of early American folk lulling a country & western tale. In her mind, it was an obvious development. \u201cI always did hum things,\u201d she would simply say to the small coterie of friends who\u2019d soon get to hear her compositions, striking originals crafted at a time when people with guitars were expected to interpret old tunes. Working by day and spending most of her free time crafting songs in her studio apartment, Converse bought herself a Crestwood 404 reel-to-reel tape recorder and began committing her creations for voice and guitar to tape. Every time a new composition was complete, she would dispatch it to her younger brother in Michigan. When their parents visited New York for Thanksgiving \u201952, she found it the right time to formally disclose her new activity. She played some choice material for them (in what was arguably her first performance in front of others) and recorded the whole thing. Unlike the solo renditions contained in the previous tapes, here Connie was mostly hesitant. She finally regained her confidence with \u2018Talking Like You\u2019, the song that, more than 70 years later, would be her most streamed. But then the reaction was less enthusiastic \u2013 her father, in particular, puzzled by the line \u201cIn the yard I keep a pig or two, they drop in for dinner like you used to do.\u201d Creatively at least, Converse was on a hot streak.<\/p>\n