In 2009, thirty-five years after the musician Connie Converse packed her belongings in her Volkswagen Beetle and drove west, never to be heard from again, a small record label released a collection of her songs titled How Sad, How Lovely. The tracks were all lo-fi home recordings—some captured by the artist Gene Dietch, who facilitated her only public performance on “The Morning Show” in 1954, and others by Connie herself, on a tape recorder in her apartment. I heard of Connie’s disappearance before I heard any of her music, and I, like many others, was captivated by the story of her life. Her songs, with their sparse yet sophisticated sincerity, hooked me even more. How sad, sure, but also how haunting, thrilling, lovely, and sweet.
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