In So Glad I Made It: The Saga of Roger Salloom, America’s Best Unknown Songwriter, the documentary about his serpentine musical journey, there are a lot of scenes of Roger Salloom walking. These solitary sojourns are designed to represent the Northampton musician’s roller-coaster travails on life’s long and winding road.
And to think that this story was told before the night his heart stopped.
Three times.
At dusk on the night of May 28, 2009, Salloom almost slipped from this sphere. He suffered a massive cardiac arrest, and barely made it to Cooley Dickinson Hospital, where doctors saved his life.
A few weeks later, he was still in the hospital, but with a new lease on life, and a new dedication to his craft. This Saturday he takes to the Academy of Music stage in Northampton for his 27th annual free concert, where he vows to play this show—and any show—like it might just be his last.
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If this were a fictional movie, Salloom—who would most certainly best be played by his doppelg?nger, Tony Shaloub (even the surnames sound alike)—would see his musical life flash before his eyes as he sped off in an ambulance: glory days sharing San Francisco stages in the late ’60s with the likes of Santana and Van Morrison; roaming the bars of Nashville as a ’70s songwriter; hearing his own “hit song” “Out of Worcester” playing through his car stereo; onstage outdoors at the Pines Theater, leading a rocking band under a starry summer sky.
While these things did happen, this isn’t the movies. The typically healthy martial arts practitioner—normal blood pressure and cholesterol—blacked out cold after feeling “something wrong” in his chest.
After the doctors stabilized his stalled ticker, he spent 17 days in the Intensive Care Unit before realizing just how lucky he’d been to survive.
“Doctors and nurses kept stopping by and saying to me, ‘You’re very lucky,'” Salloom recalls. “I thought it was just a colloquialism, like, ‘You’re a lucky guy.’ But when you look at the stats, it’s absolutely amazing.”
He’s certain that what hit him that May evening—a congenital narrowing of the heart—is what claimed all of his maternal uncles, who succumbed around the same age.
“Genetics plays a huge role in our health—our programming,” he says. “If it weren’t for the staff and cutting edge medical technologies at Cooley Dickinson and Baystate Medical Center, I’d be up there auditioning for Jimi Hendrix’s new group, or Jimmie Reed’s, Hank Williams’, Jimmie Rodgers’, Jelly Roll Morton’s.”
That list, along with Bob Dylan, lays out many of Salloom’s own influences: American musical heroes and pioneers in the fields of rock, country and jazz.
Salloom is a music historian and a technician when it comes to crafting songs. He’s one of those guys who’ll play a song that sounds deceptively simple—held together by gravelly vocals and acoustic strum—until you break down what he’s done. Compelling stories of the human condition, told clearly and well. He just makes it look easy.
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Salloom’s research told him that 95 percent of people who suffer what happened to him don’t make it.
Life changed after “the incident,” even for an eternal optimist like Salloom.
“It scares you, then you’re rattled, but then you realize that life is so precious and then you get another jolt of optimism,” he says. “It’s a rare thing, and you need to enjoy every minute of it with one foot in the future but one in the present.”
His approach to music also changed, particularly as it relates to playing live. He’s always loved performing, but says he savors those precious opportunities now more than ever.
Almost dying has reminded him to “play the room”—to connect with an audience who will never be there again in that moment in space and time.
“These people are all out there listening—they’re all humans, temperatures of 98.6, and they really need to be nurtured,” says Salloom. “I feel a better connection to them, and I may never get another chance to sing for them. They’ve all got hearts beating in their chests.”
Salloom has always been a confessional sort of songwriter. You can learn a great deal about him by going back to the beginning of his discography and listening forward. There’s not a lot of artifice there.
And last year’s happenings gave him plenty of new material with which to work.
“Some would say that this is what existentialism is—laying it all bare,” he says. “If you listen to [all my songs], I don’t hide anything. You’ll get a good sense of who I am.
“I don’t know how other people feel—I don’t have time to find out how other people feel. I only know I how I feel.”
So Glad I Made It details the litany of obstacles, both personal and professional, that slowed his career.
Typically Salloom plays a few tunes to accompany screenings of the film, and says the response has been overwhelming—for him and the audience.
“People feel rejuvenated themselves by the movie,” he says. “It’s all about a struggle, about a guy who’s got to climb a 20-foot wall with an 18-foot ladder. They feel ennobled by it; they feel connected, because it’s all about the struggle we all face.”
Salloom has fully healed physically, and has received nothing but good news about his health since the attack. His heart is monitored nightly, and the doctors have not seen even one irregular “blip,” calling his situation a “cardiac homerun.” In addition to his crack team of medical practitioners, he credits his wife Donna with helping him recover so quickly.
In some ways, he feels like he’s in an even better situation than typical men his age. Thanks to all the monitoring and medication, his doctors have “made it so it won’t happen again.”
Now, in addition to playing and working on Leold, his comic ruminations that have appeared in several publications, Salloom is dedicated to spreading the word about heart-related issues, and pushing for greater awareness and early screenings—something insurance companies are often averse to doing—along with the installation of “downtown defibrillators” in places like Northampton to help save lives.
Roger Salloom’s annual summer extravaganza revs up at the Academy at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 28. The event marks the 27th year of the free concert he says was created “in the spirit of ’67, ’68 San Francisco as something for the community, and for me and my band.”
He’ll be backed up onstage by the Roger Salloom Band, featuring Jeff Dostal, Tom Filiault, Dave Lincoln and the Ninja Horns. The night also includes special guests Evelyn Harris, Barbara Ween, Jeff D’Antona, and Jamie Kent.”
For more information, visit www.rogersalloom.com.
