For a short time, Polly Niles appeared destined for major success, yet her career faded when the album she recorded across 1969 and 1970 remained unreleased. A solitary selection, “Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind,” reached the public on a little-known 1970 compilation; that polished pop tune, lightly touched by psychedelia, combined with her personal history to sustain a modest cult following until the full project finally emerged in 2019. Although Niles had trained in folk and musical theater, she moved comfortably among adult-contemporary, vocal-pop, and country- or blues-inflected styles, and the recovered album, Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind, demonstrated that a thriving career could have been hers under altered conditions.
Polly Niles entered the world as Polly Grannis on October 31, 1945, in Staten Island, New York. Her father thrived as an investment banker at the New York Stock Exchange, while her mother ran an employment agency. From childhood she pursued music and dance with equal fervor, earning high-school honors in both Voice and Dance. Drawn to folk music during adolescence, she acquired a guitar and taught herself to play. After enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she followed the counsel of actor and filmmaker Sydney Pollack and transferred to the Wynn Handman School of Acting. Upon finishing her training, she secured regular work as a model and actress, supplied voice-overs for commercials, and contributed session vocals as a backing singer. During a college production in Boston she encountered Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the folksinger renowned for his close ties to Woody Guthrie and for guiding a young Bob Dylan. Their acquaintance deepened into romance and marriage; Niles soon joined Elliott onstage and became a familiar presence in the Greenwich Village folk scene.
The union with Elliott proved brief. Niles next married David Niles, a versatile figure active in music and theater. He assumed management duties, placed her under his Viva Productions banner, and introduced her to Jeff Kruger, founder of the prominent British independent label Ember Records. Convinced of her commercial prospects, Kruger signed her to Ember in July 1969. Sessions took place in London under Beau Ray Fleming and in New York with David Niles producing; Niles contributed two originals, while the repertoire also drew from Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Carole King, and Bob Dylan. Dissatisfied with the producers’ oversight, she suffered an emotional crisis after losing a close friend and subsequently severed ties with the label. Although tracks were prepared for promotional singles, both remained at the test-pressing stage; “Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind” appeared instead on Ember’s 1970 sampler Future Star Explosion: New Faces of the 70’s. The album itself was abandoned, and Niles parted company with the company.
By 1972 she considered that chapter closed. After making her screen debut in the cult film Super Fly, she and David divorced. She later married Tony Silvester, producer and member of the R&B group the Main Ingredient. The couple raised three children, and Niles suspended her professional activities to focus on family life. In the 2000s she resided in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, attending to her ailing parents, when interest in her music unexpectedly revived. The British reissue imprint Fantastic Voyage began mining the Ember archives; two tracks from the unreleased album—“Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind” and “The Milk of the Tree”—appeared on the 2009 anthology Rainy Day Mind: Ember Pop 1969-1974. Subsequent volumes—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)—included additional material, prompting collectors to locate Niles, who had moved to Florida following her parents’ deaths. Grapefruit Records gathered every surviving Ember recording and, in 2019, issued Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind, a two-disc set containing the complete unreleased album plus demos, outtakes, and alternate mixes.
