Sixto Rodriguez passed away at the age of 81

Jim

Tennalaga Class
Joined
Jun 4, 2020
Location
Holland
Sad to hear his passing away. He was definitely a hero in between music genres, fabulous documentary about him. Of course Sugar Man is his most memorable song however his two officially released albums carried alot of great songs.
Check out the documentary on him....
 
When I had my import record store in the centre of Sydney (White Light Import Records), about 1975/76 at a guess, we suddenly noticed that literally almost every person who walked in the door was asking for Rodriguez "Cold Fact" LP. It would have been at least 100 people per day. It turns out a local radio station was playing it every day, but there were no copies available anywhere in the world. We didn't have any, and no other shop had any. It took about 6 months before one import store got hundreds of copies from a cut-out distributor in the USA. We went straight out and bought 50 copies (or some amount). Then we just sold them at the same price we paid, to get rid of the non-stop herds of people who swarmed us every day for months searching in vain for "Cold Fact". It nearly drove us crazy!! I think Sydney was the place where the "Cold Fact" craze initially took hold. I remember it well.
 
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When I had my import record store in the centre of Sydney (White Light Import Records), about 1975/76 at a guess, we suddenly noticed that literally almost every person who walked in the door was asking for Rodriguez "Cold Fact" LP. It would have been at least 100 people per day. It turns out a local radio station was playing it every day, but there were no copies available anywhere in the world. We didn't have any, and no other shop had any. It took about 6 months before one import store got hundreds of copies from a cut-out distributor in the USA. We went straight out and bought 50 copies (or some amount). Then we just sold them at the same price we paid, to get rid of the non-stop herds of people who swarmed us every day for months searching in vain for "Cold Fact". It nearly drove us crazy!! I think Sydney was the place where the "Cold Fact" craze initially took hold. I remember it well.
He was huge in South Africa.
 
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I remember seeing this great documentary on Sixto plus a live concert registration. I did remember seeing his albums filed away under Latin in a tiny record store in my home town.

So the day after I rushed out to this store and bought his two original albums for $5 each. Upon leaving the store I heard someone yelling Sh**t, seemed he had the same idea the only difference being he was hoping to make big bucks.

They now reside happily on my shelf of heroes. This man overcame alot of bigotry and deserves all the credits in the world.
Seeing South African bigots literally scratch out the songs they deemed unsavory for playing on the air, how painful. So a big hats off to Sixto....