Sixto Rodriguez was for all purposes a failure as a musician for four decades.  Unbeknownst to him his music had been taken and used in another part of the world where he became immensely popular.  That country was South Africa, where his songs became the anthem of the anti-Apartheid movement.  That ignorance  ended when two South Africans made a documentary called, “Finding Sugar Man.”  As a result of that work, they found Rodriguez living a hard scrabbled life in Detroit living with his failed dreams.  He is finally getting recognition at age seventy for his work, but the royalties from these last four decades have disappeared into the veld. See the video of his story here.