Did we ever find out who sang Milli-Vanilli? And yes, they WERE popular, and you liked ‘em too, quit lyin’! ! !
Yes, it’s well known who did the singing for Milli Vanilli:
So Kurt Loder is just making stuff up?
His name is Brian Carroll. He does interviews with the media out of character. No real mystery at all.
This guy seems pretty elusive.
The identity of Thomas Pynchon has often been discussed. I don’t know whether the debate has settled or not. Nonetheless almost nothing is known about the man.
Apart from where there are clearly other drivers (e.g. “American Stig”), whether there are many people playing the part of the Stig is just one theory. Whether true or not, it still fits the OP.
It’s pretty well settled that there is a Thomas Pynchon, and his early life had been documented (i.e., high school, college, that he worked at Boeing for a time, etc.). However, very little is known about him since he became a full-time writer.
Mark Felt is a really good example. He managed to be anonymous for decades with a great deal of interest in his real ID.
The Stig is known. I’ve even thought of having a t-shirt made with the Stig helmet and the words, “I am Ben Collins.”
Wiki spends a paragraph on the TISM page detailing who the members really are.
B. Traven is slightly in doubt, but it seems there is at least a strong possibility that his origin has been discovered.
The Zodiac killer is an excellent example.
Jandek I just don’t understand. His checks come back endorsed with the same normal name every time, and his record label has the same phone number as Sterling Smith Corporation, which uses the same name.
I’m talking about people who are really, really, actually unknown to people they don’t associate with. There is also the subset of people who are famous for one moment, and either might not even know they’re “famous”, like Katrina Beer Guy, or haven’t had to maintain a public persona after the fact, like Tank Guy. The ones like Banksy, etc. are more interesting. Are there more examples of those?
I dunno if this counts…
but there have been questions raised for the past couple centuries about the identity of the guy who wrote Shakespeare’s plays.
Jockey Robyn Smith-Astaire, Fred’s widow
Here Come the Mummies, a funk band from Nashville that dresses up in makeup and white bandages to hide their identities. From what I can recall, they’re a bunch of guys who wanted to play together but couldn’t do so officially because they all belong to different labels. Supposedly some of them (and the lineup changes pretty frequently due to everyone’s official obligations to other bands) are Grammy winners.
A buddy of mine here is a sound technician/videographer who has worked with them a couple of times and he says they guard their identities pretty closely when they arrive at their venue.
They have some really great videos on Youtube of their performances on the Bob & Tom show, I highly recommend them.
There’s a Canadian musician called “Nash the Slash” whose face is always wrapped up like “The Invisible Man”. I don’t think he’s been identified yet.
Huh? She was pretty well known in her own right as a jockey: top US jockey (even called the best female jockey in the world), the first woman jockey to win a stakes race, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated, etc.
She retired when she married Astaire, but was a celebrity in the world of horse racing at that point.