On Wikipedia’s “List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1910–1990,” Connie Converse appears. Date: August 1974. Age: Fifty. Missing from: Ann Arbor, Michigan. As the story goes, Converse drove off that summer in her Volkswagen Beetle, leaving the remainder of her life an open question.
It’s hard to discover the prescient songs of Converse and not simultaneously learn this haunting fact, large as it looms over the story of her life: at least, over the faintly drawn version that’s circulated during the past decade and change. One encounters this version online or in liner notes or in conversation, should her music materialize in the background of a party and catch someone by surprise. Such was certainly the case for Howard Fishman, author of To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse, the first full-length book about the enigmatic mid-century singer, songwriter, and composer.
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