Sixto Rodriguez was an American songwriter/singer in the the 1970s. He made two albums :

• Cold Fact (1970)
• Coming From Reality (1971)

Both albums were a failure in America and Sixto quickly stopped making music. He was working as a construction worker at the time. But somehow one of his records got to South Africa and spread like a disease.

At one point he was LITERALLY MORE FAMOUS THAN ELVIS in South Africa. And he didn't even know it.

Nobody still knows how this came to be but I heard some stories of a girl who acctually bought a copy of his album and brought it to her friends in Cape Town. They quickly started LOVING his music and made illegal copies of the music plate as they couldn't find them in stores. Nobody knew anything about him.

Then human nature kicked in. As nobody knew ANYTHING about him somebody had to make up stories for their own self worth. Rumors started about how he killed himself on stage with a gun, how he lit himself on fire on stage etc.

Okay so happened next?

Nothing for more than 20 years. In the 1990s there was an unexpected revival of his musical career because determined South African fans managed to find and contact Rodriguez through the power of Internet.

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This was told in the 2012 Academy Award–winning documentary film Searching for Sugar Man.

After the fans managed to contact him they flew him out to South Africa where he did numerous concerts that were all sold out. He was still working as a construction worker even when he found out he was a rockstar and they say he donated all of his money from the movie and music to his friends and family.