Searching For Sugar Man is the Oscar-winning documentary which tells the nearly unbelievable story of a Mexican-American musician named Sixto Rodriguez. He quit music after two of his early albums released in the 70s bombed in America but somehow gained a huge fan base in Apartheid-era South Africa. Rodriguez had no idea he was a legend there until fans tracked him down in Detroit, Michigan. The film rules, but it doesn’t provide intimate details of Rodriguez’s crazy life story:
Dead or Alive?
10 years ago, most people thought Sixto Rodriguez was dead. There were plenty of rumors, but no one knew where he was, what happened to him, or if he was even alive. There was an ad in British magazine published in 1996 asking for, “any information about US singer Rodriguez, who wrote all his work in prison and shot himself onstage after quoting from his song Thanks For Your Time.” There were no replies. Most people in the UK hadn’t heard of Rodriguez in the first place.
Dead Or Alive@
Detroit, Michigan
Sixto Rodriguez was born in 1942 in Detroit, Michigan. He comes from a Mexican immigrant working-class family. He is the last of 6 children in the family, hence his name. Both of his parents immigrated to the USA from Mexico in the 1920s. Rodriguez faced many difficulties growing up in a poor inner-city family, and often he felt extremely alienated.
Detroit Michigan
