When Fame Comes Very, Very Late
Musicians who caught their tailwinds late in their lives or after their lives
Johann Sebastian Bach is one of history’s three greatest composers (along with Beethoven and Mozart), but his fame didn’t really blossom until the mid-19th century—75 or 80 years after his death. That fact contains both sadness (that he never enjoyed the fame he deserved) and joy (that his name rings out around the world and across the centuries). On this quiet Memorial Day, I’ll share the stories of a handful of mid-20th century folk/pop musicians whose fame (in selected circles) was similarly deferred—along with some clips of their music.
There’s a special place in my heart for people whose success comes late in the game. A 2025 Bastiat’s Window essay (“If You’re Breathing, There’s Still Time”) told the story of a friend’s father, forced to restart his life again and again—including a ground-level medical internship at an age when many doctors had already retired. As a musician, I’m particularly intrigued by late-arriving musical fame. The videos below offer some gentle sounds, accompanied by brief descriptions of the musicians. The common theme is that their fame and acclaim arrived when audiophiles began circulating their long-forgotten recordings on the Internet.
Every one of these musicians had a strange, convoluted life. If you’re looking for some stories that are both tragic and uplifting, click on the links to their biographies.
NICK DRAKE (1948-1974)
Nick Drake was a terrific, understated singer and songwriter but suffered from depression. He attracted little attention before he died of an overdose of antidepressants in 1974 at 26. My favorite of his surviving cuts is “River Man.”
The erudite and entertaining YouTuber Charles Cornell described “River Man” as “the most hauntingly beautiful 4-chord song ever written.” For 17 minutes, Cornell explores what makes this 4-minute song so special—including its not-at-all-obvious parallels with Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” Cornell’s explanation is deep enough to fascinate an academic musicologist and approachable enough to captivate a musical novice.
MOLLY DRAKE (1915-1993)
Nick Drake was slightly known during his brief lifetime, but his mother, Molly Drake, only achieved her own modest fame years after her own death in 1993. In the course of creating a documentary, A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, filmmaker Jeroen Berkvens discovered that Molly, too, had been a poet, songwriter, singer, and the most profound influence on her son. None of her works had ever been published or released, and only her family and a few close friends even knew about her creative endeavors. In the quarter-century since the film, Molly Drake, like her son, has achieved cult status among music aficionados.
Berkvens’s documentary included two of Molly’s wistful compositions (“Poor Mum” and “Do You Ever Remember?”), sung in her delicate, long-ago-far-away voice. I think my favorite, however, is “Little Weaver Bird.” Molly’s life, from birth in Burma to her job as a radio announcer in India, is interesting in itself.
LINDA PERHACS (1943-present)
In 1969-70, Linda Perhacs was living among hippies in Topanga Canyon, California, but working as a dental hygienist near Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Lots of her patients were A-list celebrities. One patient was Leonard Rosenman, a celebrated film composer, who asked about her hobbies. She said she was a singer/songwriter. He told her that Hollywood was making loads of films about hippies and counterculture and that composers like himself knew nothing about actual hippie music. So, he asked her to show him some songs. He was blown away and decided to produce an album, which was called “Parallelograms.” The record company did a miserable job of producing and promoting the album, to the profound dissatisfaction of both Perhacs and Rosenman. In particular, the album was designed for AM radio and, thus, eliminated the delicate frequencies that made her sound so unusual and memorable. She remained a dental hygienist, and her music was forgotten.
In 1998, an independent record label reissued her album, and it took them two years to find her and let her know. In 2003, the indy label re-reissued the album, this time based on the original, high-quality tapes. Larger labels reissued it over the next decade, and in 2014, she recorded her second album—44 years after her first. She released a third album in 2017.
The first song of hers that came to my attention was “Hey, Who Really Cares.” Her most celebrated piece is probably “Parallelograms”—the title track from her original album. The harmonies and rhythms are striking, and the words have been described by Perhacs and others as synesthetic—inspired by clouds and contrails she saw in the California hills, as well as by states of emotion and consciousness.
VASHTI BUNYAN (1945-present)
Around 1965, Vashti Bunyan was discovered by the Rolling Stones’ manager, who imagined her as a successor to Marianne Faithful, who had just left the Stones’ label. She recorded some songs, they went nowhere, and she headed off to a commune in Scotland in a horse-drawn Romani wagon (vardo). She did bits and pieces of recording while living a spartan life and raising a family.
In the Internet Era, Bunyan was rediscovered, and an album was released in 2000. I discovered her through her “Train Song,” which highlights her ethereal voice. To be honest, I first discovered the song through a cover by singers Feist and Ben Gibbard.
TIA BLAKE (1952-2015):
Kidnapped in her youth by her father, who worked for the CIA, Tia went off to France at around age 18. In 1971, she recorded an album, published by a small French label. It went nowhere. She did a bit more music and then moved along to other endeavors, including a written memoir of her time in Vietnam, searching for her father. Her recordings were rediscovered in 2011, and she died four years later of cancer.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
I could go on and on with still more names of mid-century musicians who languished and/or died in obscurity before the Internet and related technologies led interest in their works to surge. Among them are:
JUDEE SILL (1944-1979): After a tragedy-laden life, she died in 1979 of an overdose in such obscurity that no obituary was published and some friends were unaware of her demise till years later. Here’s her “There’s a Rugged Road.”
CONNIE CONVERSE (1924-????): She was one of the earliest singer/songwriters in the New York folk scene. In 1974, she informed family and friends of her intention to find a new life. She vanished and was never heard from again. Click here for “Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains).”
JIM SULLIVAN (1939-????): Another performer who mysteriously vanished. He was last seen in the wilds of New Mexico in 1975. One of his best-known pieces was “U.F.O.”—which might explain why some of his enthusiasts believed he was taken away by aliens.
EVA CASSIDY (1963-1996): Cassidy wrote a modest number of songs but was best-known as an interpreter of the works of others. She attained modest acclaim in the Washington, DC, area before her death at 33 from cancer. As with the others described above, her reputation has grown markedly in the Internet Era. My friend Brian A——, a fine DC-area musician, suggested that I include Cassidy here, and so I have. Here’s her “Fields of Gold.”
MORE TRADITIONAL MEMORIAL DAY FARE
On two previous Memorial Days, I told the story of Tommy Warren, a high school acquaintance who died in 1968, age 18 in Vietnam. Having published two versions of the story in the past, I won’t devote another column to that account, but here it is, if you care to learn of Tommy’s life, death, and impact he had on me in the few months that I knew him.
Look into Sixto Rodriguez.
Some scientists have also suffered from recognition coming very late in life, or even after their deaths. In some cases, the work was not simply unrecognised, but was actively ridiculed (leading sometimes to suicide). Examples of people whose work was not appreciated at the time are Evariste Galois (group theory), Niels Henrik Abel (algebra), Gregor Mendel (genetics), Alfred Wegener (continental drift), Ludwig Boltzmann (statistical mechanics), and Ignaz Semmelweis (infection).