'Searching for Sugar Man' singer Sixto Rodriguez dead at 81
Sixto Rodriguez, an American singer-songwriter whose outsized popularity in South Africa inspired the Oscar-winning documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," passed away on Tuesday at the age of 81, a website dedicated to him said on Wednesday.
"Searching for Sugar Man" follows two South African music fans on their journey to discover the fate of Rodriguez.
The 2012 documentary by Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul won the Oscar in 2013. Bendjelloul said at the time that he was drawn to the story because it was like a real-life fairy tale.
Rodriguez wrote and sang about the hard streets of Detroit in 1970 and was considered by many in the music profession to be a talent on the order of Bob Dylan. His lyrics, set to a heart-stirring rasp of a voice, told about the homeless and the working poor.
Songs titled “Street Boy,” and “Inner City Blues,” and “Cause” told the tale of society in decline and the cold comfort of the drug dealer around the corner: “Sugar Man." His two albums of the 1970s, “Cold Facts” and “Coming from Reality”, had no commercial success in the United States.
"You have to be ready for rejection, criticism and disappointment, so those kinds of things are pretty much built into any career and so with music, it's such," Rodriguez said at the premiere of the documentary.
