Roby Ward Duke...The Man Behind the Strings

I was introduced to Roby Duke in about 1980 or so. I was drawn to his music because against a canvass of finely minted music he neatly applied words that expressed my heart…I loved the album Not the Same although to be honest, I still don’t get the parrot on the cover…in fact nobody gets the parrot on the cover!

He was a Christian with a swagger and a sassy southern drawl. He was my kind of guy… and thus we began a relationship that lasted over 25 years.

Roby was, as Joe Foscht of CC Philly said, “A study in contrasts” By gis own admission he was the sensitive artist type trapped in a truck drivers body.

He was to most “Gospel Gus” as he liked to call himself but not to far below the surface was the “Mississippi River Rat”.

He didn’t think much of church or phony pastors but he loved church people.

He liked bacon grease, grits, and biscuits and gravy like any southern man, but living in the NW he learned like sushi... what most southerners would call “bait”.

A line he often used to describe his momma’s biscuits was “they were so good if you put one on top of your head your tongue would slap for brain silly trying to get to it!”

He drank Folgers coffee with Eagle brand milk but with out shame, order a double skinny tall-raspberry-chocolate-vanilla-latte.

He was part Mississippi redneck and part brilliant philosopher

Religiously he could be defined as a Pentecostal—southern Baptist--Emerging Presbyterian…He was a white man with a black man’s soul!

He could sing Amazing Grace with such passion it would make John Newton blush but turn around and sing Mahalia Jackson’s “You can’t hurry God” with the grease and style of Mississippi John Hurt.

I loved the line in that song that goes, “You can’t squabble with God; He might just bust your face…with His redeeming love and His amazing grace”

Roby had a simple faith but a complicated theology—He was our friend

Phil Keaggy, who attended the funeral in Greenwood Mississippi, once called Roby “the groove meister”. Although he couldn’t read music and he didn’t understand much about theory, be baffled the Ph.D’s. He just by nature understood music and what made a song work. He once told me that the “groove” is determined by what happens between the beat.

He was random. If you ever sat at one of his concerts, you know what I am talking about. He’s start talking about God’s grace but end up talking about growing up in the Mississippi delta. It’s didn’t matter what journey he took you on; you just liked the ride!

One of the things that used to drive me nuts was when he’d be singing some tender song, and every one was about to cry and he’s slip into his beautiful falsetto voice and then say in time to the music “I know you think I sing like a girl.”

One of his great joys in life was to aggravate me ( It was all done in love) A couple of years go, He showed up at my house with the top down on his convertible, guitars hanging out the side, and two Hindu tattoos on his arm. He said devout Hindus put them on his left arm so, in typical Roby fashion he put them on his right arm. I asked why he did it in the first place. His reply was “To start up conversation…. But I think he did it just to irritate Christians. He liked to push the conservative legalistic Christian types over the edge. He did a good job of it!

Roby said he didn’t like crowds yet he seemed to so comfortable in front of them

He communicated confidence but he in reality he wasn’t. He had doubts, and he had problems. He struggled for long periods of time with depression…he hated it… but out of the struggle came his songs of hope

About 10 years ago, issues in his personal life drove him into “A self imposed exile” as he called it. Poor choices, a bankruptcy, being dropped for a popular evangelist’s crusades, and a Christian market that was more image oriented than appreciative of talent, brought him to the brink of disaster. Oen night he called my brother Chris at 2:00am. He just cried. He asked had guns and knives at his side and asked “why he shouldn’t just end it all”. Chris, one of his closest confidants, drove to his house with junk food, and they binged and talked until morning. He would later say that Chris saved his life

His time of “exile” was brutal on him. For much of the time he time he abandoning the Christian market and would have fading into the woodwork had it not been for a few pastors wouldn’t let him do that. We just kept reaching out to him listening to him, hiring him for a “mercy gig” as he called it.

As brutal as that time was, a good thing happened. Roby discovered alternative guitar tunings. He experimented in DADGAD then moved to DADEAD. Some of his best music was composed in DADEAD. He slowly began to emerge from the exile as a “new and improved Roby Duke”. Although not as marketable because by enlarge, the pop world is image oriented and doesn’t appreciate that type of talent he penned some of his best music ever. Songs like “One Embrace”, You can’t hurry God” Deceptions Pass” (a song about his own spiritual healing) and his version of “Amazing Grace” were birthed during this time.

The album “Relaxed Fits” was a remake of many of his old songs but done in alternate tunings. It’s like hearing the songs again for the first time. They grip your soul, squeeze out all the pain, and infuse new hope.

Something that always intrigued me was his lyric. Where did he get his ideas? Usually from ever day experiences. The song Bridge Divine was written after a heated discussion with my sister-in-law, Jan.

“Take no Sorrow” was not about a woman, as many thought but his being replaced as producer of a then popular singing group.

There was tension for years between he and his Pentecostal mother. But his respect for her prayers was captured in the song “Mississippi”. When tornadoes would sweep thru Money, Mississippi, where he grew up, she would take the kids, Neal, Barbara and Roby under the bed and pray. He recounted that in the line “It all comes down to rainy days and watching tornadoes, my mamma prayed God would see us thru and all I remember is the sky got blue again”

One of his best known songs was “I Shall See God. He told me he came up with a nice “groove” but struggled with where to take the song lyrically. He played the beginning over and over looking for inspiration when he noticed in his peripheral vision, his son Brantley, then just a toddler, standing in the door way to his studio. Roby raised his read to look and Brantley darted out of the door way. This went on for several minutes and became a game. Roby then wrote the first line of the song which would go on to describe his first moments in heaven…”it’s almost as if some one is standing there…and I don’t know what I’d give to see the face that seems to stare”

Honesty was one of his main characteristics. At a concert he did in Sept at my church in he openly confessed he’d made some big mistakes—imploded is the word he used. He went on to say it was all done when he was a Christian and the spirit of God dwelling in him. His honesty breathed life into many a Christian who felt trapped by religiosity

He was a one of a kind…an original…a unique gift given to all of us. Yet, rather than become arrogant and enamored with his talent or genius…he was humble. Every one he met became his best friend. At his funeral and memorial ever one who spoke said “Roby was my best friend”. He made you feel that way. He was not perfect. He sang and spoke not of living a perfectly life but of relaxing and enjoying God’s perfect grace and the loving savior.

Roby was passionate about heaven, the grace of God, and of finishing well. He has written three great songs. “Promised Land,” was written at the beginning of his career when he was just 18 or 19 years old; One in the middle, “I shall See God”, and then most recently, “One Embrace”. It was his guiding hope and desire to be welcomed home, faults and all, and to be embraced by Jesus “as a good and faithful son”

I miss Roby and he has left a huge whole in my family’s life. He was my brother. He considered himself adopted into the Hopkins family. My mom even sent him a card humorously saying, “Congratulations on your adoption”. I have gone thru most of the major events of his life, Divorce, bankruptcy, high blood pressure, sleeping in a closet, depression, discouragement. But I take comfort in the knowledge that when he died on Dec. 26, 2007 he was at the best space he had ever been in. There were no loose ends in his personal life. He’d made peace with His momma, us brother and most of all the role his father played in the murder/cover up of Emmitt Till. . His healing was seen in the song he wrote called “Boy in the River

At a retreat he did for me in October, he told be the black dog was “finally off of his back.”. He was back and he was singing gospel music again.

Most of all, He was proud of his son, Brantley. On Christmas eve he sang a song with him called “Comin Home” with his song Brantley. The Lyric went,

“Can you hold a wish in your finger tips

It could be like coming home

Can you burn a curse with a kitchen match

It could be like coming home

The song you sing could be the rope out of this hole. And the lies you tell could fall around you in the leaves

If you close your eyes, you will see my face

It could be like coming home

If you sing a loud you can feel the breeze

It could be like coming home

And one thing you must always remember don’t wait for the song to end

It could be like coming home”

Afterwards he told pastor Jerry “I can go home now”. Well, in less than 36 hours he did just that. He died of a heart attack

Roby wrote a song called One Embrace. It’s about what it would be like to be in heaven at noon. I asked him why he picked noon…He said I don’t know, it just sounded cool…maybe it was God because according to the medical examiner Roby died Wednesday Dec 6th, at noon. And at that moment, he” stepped thru the door where time is no more”. And as the song says “he was standing there speechless in awesome attire on the streets of forever at noon …he saw mountain cathedrals and mansions on high and none built one moment too soon”

The bible says Precious in the sight of the LORD, is the death of His saints."
There are no accidents with God, As Roby said, “He may not come when you want but he’s right on time” Gods timing is perfect, and He works all things together for good, for the one taken and those left.

Roby is with Jesus…and even though for selfish reason we ask why but, as Roby often said, “it all about 7 words and 7 notes: I shall see Him touch His face.” My friend Bill Walden said, Roby being with Jesus was God’s plan for Roby (and all of us) all along. I think he’s right.

So though we will for selfish reason miss him and ask why was he taken when there was still much more blue eyed soul in him…we say thanks you Lord for giving us this precious gift and for allowing us to know him and be apart of his life…and he ours.

We will miss you—I will miss you…I am sad and deeply crushed that I will no longer be able to talk with you and laugh with you and be encouraged by you… but we do not grieve as those who have no hope will meet again… “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep”