When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice on a recording, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense—a singer who seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Fishman expertly weaves a fascinating narrative of her life and music and ultimately places her in the canon as a significant outsider artist, a missing link between a now old-fashioned kind of American music and the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever.

Brittany Spanos, a senior writer at Rolling Stone, will be interviewing Howard Fishman. Since 2015, she has written numerous features, reviews, and essays on the history of popular music and current music topics. Outside of writing, she hosts two podcasts for the publication: Don’t Let This Flop and 500 Greatest Albums. Prior to taking on her role at Rolling Stone, Spanos worked as the Clubs Editor at Village Voice, handling concert listings for the paper while contributing interviews and reviews to its music blog.