Sixto Rodriguez was famous but didn’t know it for a long time. He has now passed away at the age of 81.
The musician Sixto Rodriguez (1942-2023) is dead. “It is with great sadness that we give […] announced that Sixto Diaz Rodriguez passed away today,” it said.
Condolences are expressed to his daughters Sandra, Eva and Regan and the entire family at “sugarman.org”: “May his dear soul rest in peace.” As per the website, Rodriguez suffered a stroke earlier this year and required surgery.
The singer-songwriter was born in Detroit in 1942 as the son of Mexican immigrants. After his albums “Cold Fact” and “Coming from Reality” were not particularly successful commercially, Rodriguez initially withdrew from the music world in the early 1970s.
Sixto Rodriguez was one of Dave Matthews’ heroes
Internationally, however, he gained notoriety in Australia, among other places, where he toured for the first time in 1979. The 2012 Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” follows the search for Rodriguez, who for a long time did not know that he was a star, especially in South Africa.
Johannesburg-born Dave Matthews (56) also covered Rodriguez’s song “Sugar Man”. For him, the singer-songwriter was not only a hero in his youth, but also as important as Bob Dylan (82), Cat Stevens (75) or Marvin Gaye (1939-1984) last year.
Like, among other things, there have been rumors in South Africa for years that Rodriguez is dead. In 1997, however, a journalist discovered that the musician was still alive and living in Detroit. The singer-songwriter then traveled to South Africa for the first time to go on tour. “Thank you for keeping me alive,” he said at one of the concerts.
Source: Stern
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