Gifted from a young age writing and drawing for her brothers, Converse was great at school and ended up with a college scholarship but later dropped out to start her music career in New York.
She changed her name to Connie, she would work at a printer house, then every night she would play her own music for friends and their guests. One new friend, Gene Deitch (yes, that Gene Deitch), saw her potential and managed to get her a slot on a morning TV show in 1954. However, still nobody signed her up.note .
In 1961, Converse gave up just as Bob Dylan took over the genre, she moved to Michigan where her brother lived she gave up songwriting and became the Journal of Conflict Resolution's managing editor.
However, in 1973, after the journal was sold off to Yale, Converse fell into a depression, having possibly suffered from burnout, while her friends and family tried to help she was hurt deeper by being told she needed a hysterectomy.
In 1974, after her 50th birthday, Converse packed up her things in her Volkswagon Beetle and drove away telling in letters she wanted a fresh start. note What happened to her is unknown. note If Connie is still alive, she would be over 90.
Then in 2004, her old friend Gene Deitch was on a radio show where he played a recording that he had of Connie. Two listeners, Dan Dzula and David Herman, were entranced by Connie's music, so they went searching for more music of the unknown lady and received Deitch's recordings and some her brother had, all done on tape in Deitch's kitchen.
With the songs collected, they restored them and made an album, which was a hit with Critics seeing Connie as the forerunner for the Singer/Songwriter and was very much ahead of her time.
Connie's music has inspired people with Howard Fishman writing a play A Star Has Burnt My Eye, he would also produce the album Connie's Piano Music, also her music was used in the modern dance piece "Empty Pockets" by John Heginbotham, tributes by Nat Johnson, Jean Rohe, and Diane Cluck, and even a cover album.
Discography:
- How Sad, How Lovely (2009; 2015 reissue)
- Connie's Piano Songs (2014) (written by Converse; performed by others)
- Sad Lady (2020)
Tropes in Connie's Music:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: John Brady has the main character promise himself to one lady however after waiting for a few years she moves on to someone else.
- All for Nothing: In The Man in the Sky, a young lady tired of the same men that court her decides that the only honest man is a star, she does everything to grab his attention, but nothing works and she dies remorse of her dream man.
- Ambiguously Gay: Part of the reason why Connie's music was ahead of its time might be because the unrequited love in her songs is gay; in One By One, the character and their loved one go for walks at night, making sure not to be close enough to be seen as a couple but wanted to be.
- Connie's sexuality is up for debate; she kept her personal life close and never seemed to say if she was gay or not both her brother and Deitch believe she could have been a lesbian.
- Bar Brawl: The cowherd in The Clover Saloon lost their credit after throwing their glass at someone for saying something they didn't like and then the cowherd killed the man and is waiting to be hanged.
- Blessed with Suck: Connie's skill at being good at everything might have been her undoing, at graduation she swept most of the academic awards as well as being valedictorian, by the end her parents were embarrassed rather than impressed. In her later years, she attempted to do too many things at the same time including writing both a play and novel and creating an artistic space in Michigan all to nothing
- Cartoon Creature: Talkin' Like You has the lyric:Up that tree there's sort of a squirrel thing.
- Also Dzula and Herman created Squirrel Thing Productions to publish Connie's music.
- Face on the Cover: The Cover Art for the Album How Sad, How Lovely has Connie's face looking pensive between two mountains.
- Also the EP Sad Lady has a drawing of Connie.
- Folk Music: Her music has been classed as such.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: Connie's farewell letter to her brother has hints of this:Connie: Let me go,Let me be if I can,Let me not be,If I Can't.
- Hidden Depths: Many of Connie's songs have plenty of this, there's plenty of sadness in her music, and love loss is a theme in many of her songs.
- Hilarious Outtakes: At the end of one of the songs, Connie starts laughing as her guitar goes out of tune.
- Also the fragment A Little Louder Love is seen as such.
- Location Song: Talkin' Like You is also called Two Tall Mountains which presents the secluded world of the singer whose loved one is away but she can still hear them throughout the song.
- Lost Love Montage: Johnny's Brother and The Man in the Sky.
- Murder Ballad: Despite the joyful sound of The Clover Saloon it's still about a man facing the hangman's noose.
- Self-Backing Vocalist: Connie used overdubbing in some of her music as heard in a version of Down This Road
- Shout-Out: In the song Playboy of the Western World, there are plenty of references.
- Take That!: Rowing Women is one toward Connie's conservative upbringing.
- Three Chords and the Truth: Many of her songs are her on guitar and are rather easy to learn from those many YouTube recordings.
- Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: One by One is this as well as The Man in the Sky.
