Great songs have a way of coming to the surface, even if it takes a bit of time for them to get there. “Killing the Blues” took about 30 years to find its way to the limelight. It traveled all the way from songwriter Rowland “Roly” Salley’s Woodstock, New York, apartment to the Grammy stage, on the strength of the 2007 rendition by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
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What is this haunting ballad about? How did it find its way to Plant and Krauss, and how did that unlikely duo wind up as collaborators in the first place? Let’s take a look at how it all went down, and what makes “Killing the Blues” such an Americana classic.
Roly With It
In an interview with the YouTube channel Musicians on the Record, Salley talked about how “Killing the Blues” rose up, as so many classics do, from the ashes of a failed relationship. “It’s a song about a personal situation,” he said. “There was someone I was with at the time. We had agreed to clean up our act. I did it. She skipped. It was a fork in the road. And I took it.”
Salley estimated he wrote the song in about “nine minutes” one day, and then began playing it for colleagues. It was featured on a 1977 record by the group Woodstock Mountains Revue, of which Salley was a member. And “Killing the Blues” eventually found its way to some top Americana artists, including John Prine, Chris Smither, and Shawn Colvin. Most important of all, it caught the attention of producer T-Bone Burnett, who happened to remember it many years later when looking for material for a one-of-a-kind project.
The Bluegrass Queen and the Rock God
The idea of a collaboration between Robert Plant and Alison Krauss sounded a tad absurd before it actually happened. Plant made his bones as the lead singer of perhaps the greatest hard rock band of all time in Led Zeppelin. His solo career veered away from the heavy stuff, but still usually stuck close to the rock world, often with an exotic edge. Meanwhile, Krauss was revered in the world of bluegrass for her stunning vocal stylings and her ability to modernize the genre while honoring its traditions.
Yet when the two joined up for a Lead Belly tribute in 2004, their voices created an unmistakably mesmerizing meld. They decided to do a full album together, and enlisted Burnett to produce. For his part, Burnett immediately heard the potential of the team-up, which would result in the 2007 album Raising Sand.
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“A funny thing happens with them,” Burnett told The New York Times in 2021. “When the two of them sing, it creates a third voice, a third part in their harmonies when there are only two parts. You know, one plus one equals two unless you’re counting, say, drops of rain. Then one plus one could equal one, or one plus one could equal a fine mist. Their voices are in that relative space where they sing together and it creates a fine mist.”
The pair trusted Burnett to find songs that would suit them. Burnett sent along “Killing the Blues,” and Plant was blown away. “When I first heard that song, after T-Bone sent his collection of songs, I was driving through the Welsh borders in Herefordshire,” Plant remembered to The London Times, as reported by Songfacts. “I just stopped the car. It was so poignant, so masterly.”
“Killing the Blues” turned out to be the emotional showstopper on Raising Sand, and it would earn Plant and Krauss a Grammy in 2009 for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. The vocals are indeed stunning, while Greg Leisz’s steel guitar work accentuates the heartache in the lyrics.
What Is “Killing the Blues” About?
“Killing the Blues” is a wonderful example of how a seemingly simple song (three chords) with succinct lyrics (three four-line lyrics, each punctuated by the refrain, and nary a rhyme in the entire song) can evoke so much. Those lyrics are vague enough that you can fill in your own details, but you can sense the regret that oozes through every pore of the song.
Now I’m guilty of something / I hope you never do, the narrator explains to his ex. He insinuates that while’s he can’t quite get over her, she’s managed to make it out clear. The final verse continues in that vein, as she persuades him to leave her, not understanding just how deep he’s in it: You want me to find what I already have.
In the refrain, the narrator admits to his attempts to party away his troubles: Somebody said they saw me / Swinging the world by the tail, bouncing over a white cloud / Killing the blues. The performance by Plant and Krauss captures the essence of “Killing the Blues,” the way he sounds so dejected, the way she soars above it all. These two brilliant interpreters tackling a piece of material as sublime as what Salley delivered is the perfect recipe for a classic.
Photo by Michael Buckner/WireImage
