The ebb and flow of folksinger Sixto Rodriguez text Jason Lapeyre photography courtesy of Light in the Attic Records
particularly on the album’s opening track, “Sugar Man.” And in ’69, psychedelic was the name of the game. “We had listened to the Beat- les’ stuff,” says Coffey. “We were doing things backwards, turning the tapes upside down, just for effects.” “I took the string track from one of the other songs and put it on another machine backwards,” Theodore recalls. “I was running it through a tape delay and just manipulating it by hand, so that gives you that unexplainable kind of music.” Decades later, the technique would come to be known as sampling. At the time, it was studio ex- perimentation in an attempt to find a sonic landscape that matched the vividness of Rodriguez’s lyrics. They didn’t stop there. Coffey played a Vox Tone Bender effects pedal for the fuzzed-out guitar intro on “Only Good for Conver- sation,” setting the stage for a monster bass/drum break after the second verse. At the other end of the spectrum is the marimba that suddenly joins the sparse arrangement and powerful lyrics on “Cru- cify Your Mind.” “It got to the point where we were so busy, and we were trying to be so creative, we started looking in the union book for weird instruments,” says Coffey. “We had guys come in with bass saxophones that were so heavy they had to be wheeled in on a cart. We were always trying to be on the edge. Either that or I had a short attention span.” Cold Fact was released in the spring of 1970. It was the real deal, a funky folk-rock masterpiece from a searing new voice of truth. Rodriguez flew to New York and Los Angeles to push the album. He was compared to Dylan. Billboard gave the album four stars. And then it tanked. Sussex didn’t push him right. Rodriguez wasn’t big on touring. The material was too intense. There are a number of theories, but the fact is that the record didn’t sell. Avant was still enthusiastic and put Rodriguez back in the studio for another LP with British pro- ducer Steve Rowland. Coming from Reality was released in the fall of 1971, but with Buddha pouring all its promotional energy into Sussex’s other singer/songwriter—Bill Withers—there wasn’t much
In 1969, times were ill in the Motor City. The Twelfth Street rebellion two years earlier had blown the city apart, leaving forty- three dead, 7,200 arrested, and two thousand buildings burned to the ground. Vietnam was taking Detroit’s young men and never re- turning them. White flight was in full swing, and the inner core of the city was crumbling. The city was becoming synonymous with urban blight. At the time, singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was playing at a hooker bar called Anderson’s Garden—accom- panied by a toothless saxophone player and an organist. With his back to the audience, Rodriguez was singing bibles full of truth to a gang of drunk autoworkers that couldn’t care less. “When you go out to a place and see a guy singing facing the wall, you really listen to what he was saying,” says Dennis Coffey. “And that’s when we realized that he was kind of an urban Bob Dylan-ish guy.” Motown’s legendary session guitarist was the man responsible for getting Rodriguez a record deal, along with his production partner, Mike Theodore. “We were seriously think- ing of naming his second album Rodriguez’s Back ,” adds Theodore. But he recognized the power of Rodriguez’s pure voice and lyr- ics that hit like sledgehammers. “Rodriguez hooked you in right away, with a simple melody and a clever lyric. And his voice was appealing. It was the whole package; as a vocalist and as a writer, he was there.” They brought Rodriguez to Sussex Records owner Clarence Avant, who went wild when he heard Rodriguez’s bold lyrics and strong melodies. He immediately sent the singer into the studio with the duo behind the boards. Cold Fact was recorded in the fall of 1969, with Coffey on guitar, Theodore on keyboards, and Funk Brothers, bassist Bob Babbitt and drummer Andrew Smith, as the rhythm section. “Basically, we recorded him and his guitar, uninflu- enced by anything other than what he was doing, and we built the rhythm section around him,” remembers Coffey. “We didn’t wanna interfere with his vibe. Rodriguez was centered on what he does.” The unusual process gave the producers lots of room to experiment,
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Sixto Rodriguez live at the Sewer, Detroit, circa 1969.
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