Two Tall Mountains

"Converse enrolled her brother and Jean, his new wife, as members of her own private Song-of-the-Month Club. Beginning with a 1950 composition called 'Down This Road,' her first entirely original song, and ending with 1955's 'Empty Pocket Waltz,' she mailed them roughly three dozen 'guitar songs,' all self-recorded in her tiny Greenwich Village studio at 23 Grove Street.

"The recordings reveal the result of her meticulous study and assimilation of virtually all American vernacular music to that point; either that or—like some sort of literary, New England parallel to Robert Johnson—she had made a deal with the devil. Somehow, Converse had become a master of the acoustic guitar, created a complicated and unique fingerpicking style, developed a keen understanding of harmony and complex chord voicings, and become conversant (bordering on virtuosic) in the stylistic hallmarks of rural blues, country, gospel, folk, pop, jazz, hillbilly, parlor songs, and early jazz."

At The New Yorker, Howard Fishman tells the story of Connie Converse.