Episode 503: Disappearing Folk Singer Connie Converse

13 O'Clock · Apr 9, 2026

Connie Converse, born Elizabeth Eaton Converse in 1924 in New Hampshire, was a pioneering American singer-songwriter who created intimate, literate folk and art songs in 1950s New York City years before the commercial singer-songwriter era. A gifted polymath who dropped out of Mount Holyoke College to pursue writing and music, she recorded dozens of original compositions on reel-to-reel tape—wry, harmonically sophisticated tracks like “How Sad, How Lovely,” “Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains),” and “Roving Woman”—that blended folk, blues, jazz, and classical influences. Despite a brief…