Sixto Diaz Rodriguez toiled for decades as a day laborer in Detroit's gritty Cass Corridor. To this day, he rides a bus to get around town.

Just last month, Entertainment Weekly declared him a genius.

Four decades ago, Mr. Rodriguez recorded 12 sweet, yet dark, psychedelic-tinged folk-rock songs for the album, Cold Fact, in a Detroit basement. It foundered commercially.

But 38 years later, an avalanche of raves is coming his way, thanks to the album's re-release last week by the Seattle label Light in the Attic.

In mid-August, he flew to Stockholm, courtesy of Swedish documentary filmmakers who believe his life story will captivate an international film audience. Next, the singer-songwriter will travel to New York to play for a private audience of music-industry insiders at a show sponsored by the hipper-than-thou Fader magazine.

What's happening to Mr. Rodriguez, 66, is a second chance that is the fantasy of every struggling artist: to be lauded around the world (or at least several continents) and the chance to not die in poverty.

"It's been a great odyssey," Mr. Rodriguez says as he sits in Motor City Brewing Works, one of his favorite haunts. "All those years, you know, I always considered myself a musician. But reality happened."

His sinewy arms reflect years of renovating old houses, hauling refrigerators and other manual labor he's done to survive. One of the fingertips on his left hand is missing due to a factory accident.

To say he's making a comeback is not true because he never financially made it.

To say it's the first time his music has made waves isn't true because a decade ago he discovered that, in fact, Cold Fact has for years earned him a legion of fans in South Africa.

That also means he's been seriously ripped off, since he never saw any royalties of the estimated 100,000 albums sold there.

Mr. Rodriguez wrote the songs on Cold Fact a few months after the Detroit race riots. He wrote dreamy songs based on the counterculture, working-class scene in Detroit. Spin magazine describes the songs as "gutter poetry" of junkies, dealers and prostitutes that captures a "dark era of dreams destroyed." They mean that in a good way.

When Cold Fact first came out, it didn't garner enough sales for him to tour, not even a Detroit show. He made one other album, Coming From Reality in 1972, which also went nowhere.

He thought it was the end of his musical story. He worked day labor and started a family. He got a philosophy degree from Wayne State University and became politically active. The only clue that his music registered to anyone came in 1979 when he was asked to perform in Australia. He went again in 1981. "I thought they were strange flukes," he says.

Seventeen years later, his daughter Eva told him she had found South African Web sites dedicated to him. Devout fan Stephen Segerman called him. "I told him, 'In South Africa, you're bigger than Elvis,' " says Mr. Segerman, recalling the 1996 conversation.

With the U.S. re-release of Cold Fact, he's got a real chance at American exposure and finally earning decent money. He plays a downtown Detroit gig Sept. 20.

"That's fantastic," Mr. Rodriguez says. "I mean to finally have a paid gig in my hometown. I love that."

Louis Aguilar,

The Detroit News