Rodriguez – Cold Fact [annals of over-looked genius]

From Wikipedia:

Cold Fact is the debut album from American singer-songwriter Rodriguez. It was released in the United States on the Sussex label in March 1970. The album sold very poorly in the United States (Rodriguez was himself an unknown in the U.S.), but managed to sell well in both South Africa and Australia, with Rodriguez touring Australia in 1979.

...his music was also extremely successful and influential in South Africa, where he is believed to have sold more records than Elvis Presley.

In 1971 the album was released in South Africa by A&M Records. In 1976, several thousand copies of Cold Fact were found in a New York warehouse and sold out in Australia in a few weeks. It went to No. 23 on the Australian album charts in 1978, staying on the charts for fifty-five weeks. In 1998 Cold Fact was awarded a platinum disc in South Africa, and was five-times platinum in Australia. Rodriguez has since toured South Africa and Australia with much success, but remained relatively unknown in his native country of the US. This began to change after the reissues of his albums in the US by Light in the Attic Records in 2008 and 2009, and even further in 2012 with the Academy Award winning documentary film Searching for Sugar Man, which soon led to appearances on major American television shows like 60 Minutes and The Late Show with David Letterman.

Cold Fact has sold 201,000 since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking in 1991, 173,000 of those after the film opened, 98,000 in the wake of the Oscar win. Coming from Reality has moved 105,000 albums, 99,000 since the movie hit, 60,000 post-Academy Awards. And the soundtrack album (which was picked up by Sony’s Legacy catalog division) boasts 152,000 in sales.