Roly Salley’s Letter to Steve …
I first heard the song “Killing the Blues” in 1977 sung by the guy who wrote it, Roly Salley, at a club in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I had arrived a little late for the show and the crowd was hushed as Roly sang his sweet sad song. He was accompanied by the Woodstock Mountain Revue (Happy & Artie Traum, John Sebastian, John Herald, Rory Block, Jim Rooney, Paul Siebel, Bill Keith, Eric Andersen) - a bunch of the great Woodstock area folkies. I bought their album and immediately learned “Killing the Blues”. Before long I recorded an album for Kicking Mule Records and included the song on the record. When the album was released in 1983, I sent a cassette copy to Roly but never heard back from him until an email came in 2014.
Kate and I were visiting her parents in Ft. Myers, Florida and one morning in the car she asked if I had seen my emails that morning. I had not. She turned to me and said “You got a personal email from Roly Salley”. I didn’t believe her at first and then she pulled it up on her phone and started to read it to me.
“hi steve. I guess you could say it has been awhile with a capital A. i’ve been in california and canada for many years…always playing with my band and doing other little musical things here and there. it fell to me finally this year to clean out a storage space that I’ve been holding for about twenty years and I came out of that with a trunk (or two) full of cassette tapes that are more or less the musical track to my “story”. so I’m going through them while trekking around on tour this summer…converting them to digital files…and.i came across a tape of yours that must have been a record…with my killing the blues on it. the quality of the music and singing on that tape blew me away! what a great bluegrass combo!! for me the rhythm has to be serious to begin with and the people playing on your record were ace timekeepers. On top of that…the playing and harmony singing is of a quality that might possibly restore a fella’s faith! and one other thing…in killing the blues…you faithfully kept that extra bar in before it goes to the chorus line. that is something you and shawn colvin alone pay homage to…and in my opinion…is key to the song. thank you for that! and finally I wish you after all these years…the very best. i hope to run across you out there someplace one of these days. regards from roly”
1983-2014. Sometimes it just takes time to finish the conversation.
