Rodriguez: Cold Fact [BACK TO BLACK/UNIVERSAL]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 180g pressing gives Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore's Detroit production room to breathe. Cold Fact went five times platinum in Australia and platinum in South Africa, and the Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man brought it a whole new audience.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Pressed in the Czech Republic

About the album

Some albums take the scenic route to fame. Sixto Rodriguez cut Cold Fact in Detroit in 1969, Sussex put it out the next spring, and it went on to find its first big audiences half a world away, in South Africa and Australia, where it climbed to No. 23 in 1978 and stayed on the chart for 55 weeks.

Coffey and Theodore arranged and produced it at Tera-Shirma Studio, with Coffey on guitar, Bob Babbitt on bass, members of the Detroit Symphony on strings, and a children's choir on "Gommorah." "Sugar Man" glides over eerie, psychedelic textures, "Crucify Your Mind" and "I Wonder" are cool, sharp-eyed folk-soul, and "Hate Street Dialogue" and "Inner City Blues" walk the city at street level. Nas later sampled "Sugar Man" for "You're Da Man" on Stillmatic, and The Avener took "Hate Street Dialogue" to the French charts in 2014.

In 1976 several thousand copies turned up in a New York warehouse and sold out in Australia within weeks. We check our back room regularly, just in case.

Also at Kops: more Rodriguez on vinyl · browse Folk

Tracklist

Listen

On Sussex / UMe, a reissue of the 1970 album.