CULTURAL CORNER
by Glenn R. Swift
Judy Collins – A Life of Fame, Pain and Healing
Judy Collins can’t remember life without music. Nor would she ever want to.
“I was raised in a home where music was our bread and butter as well as our pleasure. There was never any doubt as to what I wanted to do. I started singing at two and a half and have been singing ever since,” said Collins.
Collins’ father, despite being blind, was a Seattle disc jockey for over 30 years and opened many a door for his daughter.
“He was a remarkable man,” said Collins. “He loved music as much as anyone and because of him I had the opportunity to meet a number of great musicians growing up.”
Collins’ musical proclivities were obvious to her father who arranged for her to study
classical piano with world-renowned pianist, Antonia Brico. The master’s influence was profound and Collins made her public debut at age 13.
“I performed Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos,” recalled Collins.
Three years after her debut as a piano prodigy, she was playing guitar. Her music became popular at the University of Connecticut where her husband taught as Collins performed at parties and for the campus radio station along with David Grisman and Tom Azarian. Collins then made her way to New York’s Greenwich Village, where she busked (performed in public places for tips) and played in local clubs.
During the early 1960s, “The Village” was at the heart of an American folk music revival.
“It was the music of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan who would have the greatest effect upon me.”
Indeed, Collins’ career now took an entirely new direction. In 1961, she signed on with Elektra Records (a label with which she would be associated for 35 years) and released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at the age of 22.
“Through Woody, Pete and Bob I developed my love of lyrics that has lasted to this day.”
Collins went on to record her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn.” And just as Joan Baez brought Bob Dylan into the public eye, Collins was instrumental in bringing a number of lesser-known musicians to a wider audience, especially Canadian Poet, Leonard Cohen, who remains a very close friend to this day. Collins also recorded songs by Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and Richard Farina long before they garnered national acclaim.
While Collins’s first few albums comprised straightforward guitar-based folk songs, her career took yet another turn in 1966 with the release of In My Life, which included work from a number of diverse sources (the Beatles, Cohen, Jaques Brel and Kurt Weill). Mark Abramson produced and Joshua Rifkin arranged the album, adding lush orchestration to many of the numbers. The album was regarded as a major departure for a folk artist and set the course for Collins’ subsequent work over the next decade.
With her 1967 album, Wildflowers, also produced by Abramson and arranged by Rifkin, Collins began to record her own compositions, the first of which was entitled “Since You Asked.” The album also provided Collins with a major hit and a Grammy Award for “Both Sides Now,” which reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Collins’ 1968 album, Who Knows Where the Times Goes, was produced by David Anderle and featured back-up guitar by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash), with whom she was romantically involved at the time.
“Yes, I was the Judy in ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,’” laughed Collins.
Time Goes had a mellow country sound and included Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon” and the title track written by the UK singer-songwriter Sandy Denny. The album also featured Collins’s composition “My Father” and one of the first covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire.”
By the 1970s, Collins had a solid reputation as an art song singer and folksinger and had begun to stand out for her own compositions. She was also known for her broad range of material: her songs from this period include the traditional Christian hymn “Amazing Grace,” the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad “Send in the Clowns” (both of which were top 20 hits as singles), a recording of Joan Baez’s “A Song for David,” and her own compositions, such as “Born to the Breed.”
In the 1970’s, Collins guest starred on The Muppet Show, where she sang “I Know An Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly.” Collins also appeared several times on Sesame Street, where she performed her song, “Fishermen’s Song” with a chorus of Anything Muppet fishermen, sang a trio with Biff and Sully using the word “yes,” and even “starred” in a modern musical fairy tale skit, “The Sad Princess.”
In 1979, Collins posed nude on the album cover of Hard Times for Lovers. She sang the theme song of the Rankin-Bass TV movie titled The Wind in the Willows.
In more recent years Collins has taken to writing, producing a memoir, Trust Your Heart,” in 1987, as well as a novel, Shameless. A more recent memoir, Sanity and Grace, tells the story of her son Clark and his death from suicide in January, 1992.
Though her record sales are not what they once were, she still records and tours in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
“I’ve been touring nearly all my life,” Collins said. “To be able to do it at my age I have to live like an athlete. A strict diet and a routine exercise program are both par for the course. Of course, I’m also very lucky in that I have a great voice teacher and one I can depend upon.”
Collins also acknowledged good fortune as playing a role.
“I had surgery in 1977 on my vocal chords. It was the same kind of surgery that Julie Andrews had. Sadly for her, it did not work. I was blessed with a great surgeon and a brand new procedure at the time. I enjoyed a complete recovery.”
Collins performed at President Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993, singing “Amazing Grace” and “Chelsea Morning.” (The Clintons have said that their daughter Chelsea was named after Collins’ recording of the song.)
In 2008, she oversaw an album featuring artists ranging from Dolly Parton and Joan Baez to Rufus Wainwright and Chrissie Hynde covering her compositions; she also released a collection of covers of Beatles songs. In May of that year she received an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute.
Like many other folk singers of her generation, Collins was drawn to social activism. She is a representative for UNICEF and campaigns on behalf of the abolition of landmines. Following the 1992 death of her son, Clark Taylor, at age 33, after a long bout with depression and substance abuse, she has also become a strong advocate of suicide prevention.
In 2003, Collins authored Sanity and Grace: A Journey of Suicide, Survival and Strength. Four years later, Collins penned The Seven Ts, which lays out the lessons she learned in the aftermath of her son’s suicide. In this solid, heartfelt guide to grief and tragedy, Collins draws from her own experience to provide a set of tools to help “dig your way out of tragedy and loss.” The book was conceptualized as a way to better navigate Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief. Collins’ seven T’s aren’t chronological steps, but “a kind of mantra” in seven parts that’s durable enough to assist readers for a lifetime. Through the T’s, Collins deals honestly with the demons of loss-guilt, isolation, hopelessness, depression and violence, while detailing many practical, proactive ways to cope, carry on and continue healing.
As for the Seven T’s…
“Truth (tell it), trust (allow it), therapy (get it), treasure (your loved and lost), treat (your body and mind), thrive (without drugs or alcohol) and transcend.”
Whether it’s writing a book or a song, Collins’ profound wisdom and introspection are relatable to us all. A profoundly spiritual person, Collins has little use for dogmatic thinking.
“Religion is for people afraid of going to Hell; spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”
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Glenn R. Swift is a freelance writer and editor living in Jensen Beach. Winner of the Florida Magazine Association’s 1999 Bronze Award for Writing Excellence, Swift is one of the most acclaimed entertainment writers in South Florida. He is the Editor and Co-Founder of , the definitive Arts & Entertainment website for Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast: www.OnStagePalmBeach.com
Visit these sites for cultural events Around Wellington and beyond:
http://www.bocaratontheatreguild.org/
http://www.onstagepalmbeach.com/
http://www.scattershottheater.com/
