Polly Niles

For a brief moment, Polly Niles seemed poised for stardom, only to slip into obscurity when her debut album, recorded in 1969 and 1970, was shelved. Only one track from the set, "Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind," saw official release on an obscure compilation in 1970, but the song, a well-crafted pop nugget with just a dash of psychedelia, coupled with Niles' backstory, made her a minor cult figure until her album saw belated release in 2019. Niles cut her musical teeth in folk and musical theater, but she could easily adapt to adult contemporary sounds, vocal pop, and country- and blues-flavored material, and the long-lost album, Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind, confirmed she could have had a successful career under different circumstances. Polly Niles was born Polly Grannis on October 31, 1945 in Staten Island, New York. Her father was a successful investment banker and worked for the New York Stock Exchange, while her mother operated an employment agency. Music and dancing were her passions growing up, and she received awards for Voice and Dance when she graduated from high school. Captivated by folk music in her teens, Niles got a guitar and learned to play. After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she transferred to the Wynn Handman School of Acting on the advice of noted actor and filmmaker Sydney Pollack. Once Niles completed her studies, she found steady work as a model and actress, as well as doing voice-overs for commercials and landing session work as a backing vocalist. While appearing in a college play in Boston, Niles met Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the folksinger known for his close friendship with Woody Guthrie and for mentoring a young Bob Dylan. The two struck up a friendship that turned into a romance, and they married. Niles was soon singing with Elliott on-stage and became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk community. Niles' marriage to Elliott proved to be short-lived, and before long she married David Niles, a polymath whose interests included music and the theater. David became Niles' manager, signing her to his company Viva Productions, and her musical efforts led to her meeting Jeff Kruger, head of the successful U.K. independent label Ember Records. Kruger believed Niles had star potential, and in July 1969, he offered her a deal with Ember, which she accepted. Material was recorded in London (with Beau Ray Fleming producing) and New York (with David Niles at the controls), and Niles wrote two songs for the project, while the track list also included numbers by Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Carole King, and Bob Dylan, among others. However, she was less than pleased with the way the producers controlled the process of making the album, and after going through an emotional crisis following the death of a close friend, she had a falling out with Ember. Songs were chosen for singles to promote the upcoming LP, but neither got past the test-pressing stage, and though "Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind" was tapped to appear on a 1970 Ember sampler titled Future Star Explosion: New Faces of the 70's, the release of the album was scrapped and Niles and Ember parted ways. By 1972, Niles felt she had moved on, and after making her film debut in the cult favorite Super Fly, she and David divorced. Niles would later wed Tony Silvester, a producer and musician who was a member of the popular R&B group the Main Ingredient. Niles and Silvester had three children, and she put her career on hold as she devoted time to her family. In the 2000s, she was living in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania and caring for her ailing parents while her musical career experienced an unexpected resurgence. The British reissue label Fantastic Voyage began compiling a series of albums drawn from the Ember Records archives, and two selections from the unreleased album, "Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind" and "The Milk of the Tree," were featured on 2009's Rainy Day Mind: Ember Pop 1969-1974. Enough listeners were intrigued by Niles' material that more songs from the album surfaced on future Fantastic Voyage releases, Sweet Surrender: Ember Pop, Vol. 2 1970-78 (2009), Happy Hour in the Ember Lounge (2010), and Another Happy Hour in the Ember Lounge (2010). As record collectors began piecing together information about Niles and attempting to track down her whereabouts, it was discovered she was living quietly in Florida, where she had relocated after the death of her parents. Grapefruit Records brought together all the Polly Niles material in the Ember archives, and in 2019 they brought out Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind, a two-disc collection that included the unreleased album in full along with demos, outtakes, and alternate mixes.
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