Written 10Oct2016 – 28Oct2016

“Searching for Sugar Man” is the unbelievable-but-true story of an iconic musician who did not know he was famous.  While the artist’s music was influential, he seemed to have never existed.

Yeah – you read that right.

This story begins in Detroit, 1968 …

One night in 1968 Detroit, two renowned producers — Mike Theodore and Dennis Coffey — intentionally went to a back-alley bar.  They wanted to hear a rumored musician known as Sixto Rodriguez.  He played and they listened.  So impressed with his craft, they quickly offered him a recording deal.  To their surprise, when his first albums were released in 1970 and 71 … they tanked!

As the singer / songwriter faded into obscurity, bootleg recordings of Sixto Rodriguez’s album found their way around apartheid South Africa. Here, unbeknownst to him, over the following two decades his music became a cultural phenomenon — but no one knew who the artist was…

“Searching for Sugar Man” gives the account of two Cape Town fans in the late 1990s endeavoring to solve the mysteries surrounding their hero.

LINKS

• Searching for Sugar Man at IMDB
• Searching for Sugar Man at Wikipedia
• Sixto Rodriguez at Wikipedia
• Cold Fact (1970)
• Coming From Reality (1971)
• Searching for Sugar Man at Sony
• Sixto Rodriguez at Sony

NOTE – Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore also worked with Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Supremes, Gladys Knight, Ringo Starr, The Four Tops, and Wilson Pickett, among others.  Yeah, these guys are no joke.  Also, this film does not draw attention to the fact that Sixto Rodriguez did get attention in Australia.  The film receives some criticism for this, suggesting that it is ‘myth building’.  The argument against the criticism is that the film is not attempting to build a story about the artist; instead its purpose is to tell the story of the two fans and their search into the history of this artist.