Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, the Detroit-born singer-songwriter who discovered cult success in South Africa and Australia earlier than turning into the topic of the Oscar-winning 2012 documentary Looking for Sugar Man, has died. He was 81.
The musician, recognized professionally as Rodriguez, died Wednesday, it was introduced on his official web site. No explanation for loss of life was revealed.
The word on his web site continued: “We prolong our most heartfelt condolences to his daughters — Sandra, Eva and Regan — and to all his household. Might His Pricey Soul Relaxation In Peace.”
Rodriguez garnered extra widespread recognition within the U.S. later in his profession, following the discharge of Looking for Sugar Man. The doc, directed by Malik Bendjelloul, traced the folks musician’s journey from close to obscurity to worldwide cult success after his first two albums — which he recorded in Detroit within the early Nineteen Seventies — struggled to promote.
The movie acquired the 2013 Academy Award for finest documentary function, however Rodriguez was not awake on the time. “We additionally simply got here again from South Africa and I used to be drained,” he informed Rolling Stone in 2013. “I used to be asleep when it received, however my daughter Sandra known as to inform me. I don’t have TV service anyway.”
Bendjelloul died from suicide a little bit over a yr after the Oscar triumph.
Born in Michigan, the musician known as Detroit’s historic Woodbridge neighborhood dwelling. In 1981, he earned a bachelor’s diploma in philosophy from Wayne State College’s Monteith Faculty. However earlier than his higher-education journey, he had been making music below the identify Rod Riguez and in 1967 launched the only “I’ll Slip Away.” A number of years later, he would signal with Sussex Data and, shifting his skilled identify to Rodriguez, recorded and launched two albums, 1970’s Chilly Truth and 1971’s Coming From Actuality.
Each albums had been low gross sales performers, however he can be requested to carry out as a part of a live performance tour in Australia in 1979 earlier than returning in 1981 after he was already dropped by his report label. He would inform The Detroit Information that he “thought they had been unusual flukes.”
After quitting his music profession, he purchased a home at public sale in Detroit and labored in demolition and day labor whereas being politically lively in his group. That included unsuccessful runs for the Detroit Metropolis Council, the mayor of Detroit and a bid for the Michigan Home of Representatives between 1989 and 2000.
His daughter Eva discovered web sites devoted to her father in South Africa (he would additionally discover fame in locations like Botswana, New Zealand and Zimbabwe). These websites, nonetheless, claimed he had shot himself onstage or overdosed on heroin. As soon as Rodriguez clarified that he was nonetheless alive, his profession took on a second life internationally with the rerelease of his albums and a brand new spherical of touring in 2008.
“It’s been an excellent odyssey,” he stated in a 2008 interview with The Detroit Information. “All these years, , I at all times thought of myself a musician. However actuality occurred.”
