Judy Collins

For the New Zealand politician, see Judith Collins.
Judy Collins

Judy Collins performing at the Bromeley Family Theater in Bradford, Pennsylvania, on February 5, 2009
Background information
Birth name Judith Marjorie Collins
Born (1939-05-01) May 1, 1939
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Singer
  • songwriter
  • musician
  • actress
Instruments
Years active 1959–present
Labels
Associated acts
Website judycollins.com

Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939), affectionately known as "Judy Blue Eyes", is an American singer and songwriter known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk music, show tunes, pop music, rock and roll and standards) and for her social activism.

Collins' debut album A Maid of Constant Sorrow was released in 1961, but it was her cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now", the lead single from her 1967 album Wildflowers, that gave Collins international prominence. The single hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart[1] and won Collins her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.[2] She enjoyed further success with her covers of "Someday Soon", "Chelsea Morning", "Amazing Grace", and "Cook with Honey".

Collins experienced the biggest success of her career with her cover of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns" from her best-selling 1975 album Judith. The single charted on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1975 and then again in 1977, spending 27 nonconsecutive weeks on the chart and earning Collins a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, as well as a Grammy Award for Sondheim for Song of the Year.

Musical career

Collins was born the eldest of five siblings in Seattle, Washington, where she spent the first ten years of her life. Her father, a blind singer and radio disc jockey, took a job in Denver, Colorado, in 1949, and the family moved there. Collins studied classical piano with Antonia Brico, making her public debut at age 13, performing Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos. Brico took a dim view, both then and later, of Collins' developing interest in folk music, which led her to the difficult decision to discontinue her piano lessons. Years later, after she became known internationally, she invited Brico to one of her concerts in Denver. When they met after the performance, Brico took both of Collins' hands in hers, looked wistfully at her fingers and said, "Little Judy—you really could have gone places." Still later, Collins discovered that Brico herself had made a living when she was younger playing jazz and ragtime piano (Singing Lessons, pp. 71–72). In her early life, Collins had the good fortune of meeting many professional musicians through her father.[3]

It was the music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and the traditional songs of the folk revival of the early 1960s, however, that kindled Collins' interest and awoke in her a love of lyrics. Three years after her debut as a piano prodigy, she was playing guitar. Her first public appearances as a folk artist after her graduation from Denver's East High School were at Michael's Pub in Boulder, Colorado, and the folk club Exodus in Denver. Her music became popular at the University of Connecticut, where her husband taught. She performed at parties and for the campus radio station along with David Grisman and Tom Azarian.[4] She eventually made her way to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she played in clubs like Gerde's Folk City until she signed with Elektra Records, a label she was associated with for 35 years. In 1961, Collins released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at age 22.[5]

Collins during a 1963 appearance on Hootenanny

At first she sang traditional folk songs or songs written by others – in particular the protest songwriters of the time, such as Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She recorded her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn". Collins was also instrumental in bringing little-known musicians to a wider public. For example, she recorded songs by Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who became a close friend over the years. She also recorded songs by singer-songwriters such as Eric Andersen, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Robin Williamson and Richard Fariña long before they gained national acclaim.[6][7]

While Collins' first few albums consisted of straightforward guitar-based folk songs, with 1966's In My Life, she began branching out and including work from such diverse sources as the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, and Kurt Weill.[7] Mark Abramson produced and Joshua Rifkin arranged the album, adding lush orchestration to many of the numbers. The album was a major departure for a folk artist and set the course for Collins' subsequent work over the next decade.[8]

With her 1967 album Wildflowers, also produced by Abramson and arranged by Rifkin, Collins began to record her own compositions, beginning with "Since You've Asked". The album also provided Collins with a major hit and a Grammy award in Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now", which reached Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.[9]

Collins performing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 1968

Collins' 1968 album Who Knows Where the Time 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. (She was the inspiration for Stills's CSN classic "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes".) 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' composition "My Father" and one of the first covers of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire".[10]

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".[11]

In the 1970s Collins guest starred on The Muppet Show,[12] where she sang "Leather-Winged Bat", "I Know An Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly", "Do Re Mi", and "Send in the Clowns". She also appeared several times on Sesame Street, where she performed "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 called "The Sad Princess".[13] She sang the theme song of the Rankin-Bass TV movie The Wind in the Willows.[14] Collins' 1979 album Hard Times for Lovers gained some extra publicity with the cover sleeve photograph of Collins in the nude.

In more recent years Collins has taken to writing, producing a memoir, Trust Your Heart, in 1987 and a novel, Shameless. A more recent memoir, Sanity and Grace, tells of her son Clark's death in January 1992. With help from her manager Katherine DePaul she started Wildflower Records. Though her record sales are not what they once were, she still records and tours in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. She performed at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993, singing "Amazing Grace" and "Chelsea Morning". (The Clintons have stated that they named their daughter, Chelsea, after Collins' recording of the song.) In 2006, she sang "This Little Light of Mine" in a commercial for Eliot Spitzer.[15]

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 The Beatles covers, and she received an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute on May 18 of that year. In 2010, Collins sang "The Weight of the World" at the Newport Folk Festival, a song by Amy Speace.[16]

Collins joined the judging panel for The 7th, 9th, 10th,[17][18] 11th,[19]12th, 13th and 14th Annual Independent Music Awards , and in doing so, greatly assisted independent musicians' careers.

In July 2012, Collins appeared as a guest artist on the Australian SBS television programme RocKwiz.[20]

Activism

Like many other folk singers of her generation, Collins was drawn to social activism. Her political idealism also led her to compose a ballad entitled "Che" in honor of the 1960s Marxist icon Che Guevara.[21]

Collins sympathized with the Yippie movement and was friendly with its leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. On March 17, 1968, she attended Hoffman's press conference at the Americana Hotel in New York to announce the party's formation. In 1969, she testified in Chicago in support of the Chicago Seven; during her testimony, she began singing Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and was admonished by prosecutor Tom Foran and judge Julius Hoffman.[22]

She is currently a representative for UNICEF and campaigns on behalf of the abolition of landmines.[23][24]

Personal life

Collins contracted polio at the age of eleven and spent two months in the hospital in isolation.[25]

Collins has been married twice. Her first marriage in 1958 to Peter Taylor produced her only child, Clark C. Taylor. The marriage ended in divorce in 1965.[26]

In 1962, shortly after her debut at Carnegie Hall, Collins was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent six months recuperating in a sanatorium.[27]

Collins later admitted having suffered from bulimia after she quit smoking in the 1970s. "I went straight from the cigarettes into an eating disorder", she told People magazine in 1992. "I started throwing up. I didn't know anything about bulimia, certainly not that it is an addiction or that it would get worse. My feelings about myself, even though I had been able to give up smoking and lose 20 lbs., were of increasing despair." She has written at length of her years of addiction to alcohol, the damage it did to her personal and musical life and how it contributed to her feelings of depression.[28] Collins admits that although she tried other drugs in the 1960s, alcohol had always been her drug of first choice, just as it had been for her father. She entered a rehabilitation program in Pennsylvania in 1978 and has maintained her sobriety ever since, even through such traumatic events as the death of her only child Clark, who committed suicide in 1992 at age 33 after a long bout with clinical depression and substance abuse. Since his death, she has also become an activist for suicide prevention.[29]

In April 1996, she married designer and fellow activist Louis Nelson, whom she had been seeing since 1979. They live in Manhattan.[30]

Awards and recognition

Collins has received four Grammy Award nominations for Best Folk Performance or Folk Recording.

Collins also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for Send in the Clowns in 1976.[35] Stephen Sondheim won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year that same year, based on the popularity of Collins' performance of the song on her album Judith.[36]

Other Awards

Discography

Further information: Judy Collins discography

Charted singles

Year Song US US AC AUS Album
1967 "Hard Lovin' Loser" 97 – - In My Life
1968 "Both Sides, Now" 8 3 37 Wildflowers
1969 "Someday Soon" 55 37 – Who Knows Where the Time Goes
1969 "Chelsea Morning" 78 25 – (single only)
1969 "Turn! Turn! Turn!/To Everything There Is A Season" 69 28 – Recollections
1970 "Amazing Grace" 15 5 10 Whales & Nightingales
1971 "Open The Door (Song For Judith)" 90 23 – Living
1973 "Cook With Honey" 32 10 – True Stories and Other Dreams
1973 "Secret Gardens" 122 – – True Stories and Other Dreams
1975 "Send in the Clowns" 36 8 13 Judith
1977 "Send in the Clowns" (re-release) 19 15 – Judith
1979 "Hard Times For Lovers" 66 16 – Hard Times for Lovers
1984 "Home Again" (duet with T. G. Sheppard) – 42 – Home Again
1990 "Fires of Eden" – 31 – Fires of Eden

Filmography

Bibliography

RIAA Certifications

Album title Certification[38]
In My Life Gold
Wildflowers Gold
Who Knows Where the Time Goes Gold
Whales & Nightingales Gold
Colors of the Day Platinum
Judith Platinum

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Judy Collins – Chart history". Billboard. Retrieved 2015-07-30.
  2. ↑ "Bio Synopsis". Biograsphy.com. Retrieved 2015-07-31.
  3. ↑ Malkoski, Paul A. (2012). The Denver Folk Music Tradition: An Unplugged History, from Harry Tuft to Swallow Hill and Beyond. The History Press. p. 52. ISBN 1609495322.
  4. ↑ Time "Striking a Chord" Accessed April 12, 2008
  5. ↑ "Reviews of new albums". Billboard. November 27, 1961. p. 28.
  6. ↑ Simmons, Sylvie (2012). I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0771080409.
  7. 1 2 Courrier, Kevin (2005). Randy Newman: American Dreams. ECW Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN 1550226908.
  8. ↑ In My Life review at AllMusic. Retrieved March 16, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Judy Collins". Billboard. Retrieved 2013-03-16.
  10. ↑ "Judy Collins Concert: Has Fans Gentle on Her Mind". Billboard. May 24, 1969. p. 22.
  11. ↑ Santosuosso, Ernie (May 11, 1975). "Judy Collins' flight of fancy". Boston Globe.
  12. ↑ Garlen, Jennifer C.; Graham, Anissa M. (2009). Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson's Muppets. McFarland & Company. p. 218. ISBN 078644259X.
  13. ↑ Ann, Lolordo (August 13, 1977). "Judy Collins changing styles". Lodi News-Sentinel.
  14. ↑ Woolery, George W. (1989). Animated TV Specials. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810821982.
  15. ↑ Clark, Eric (October 12, 2008). "After spinning others' songs into gold, Judy Collins gets tribute album of her own works". Gazette, The (Cedar Rapids-Iowa City, IA).
  16. ↑ "Amy Speace on Mountain Stage". NPR Music. August 12, 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-26. Judy Collins, who chose Speace as the first artist on her Wildflower label, has been singing her song "The Weight of the World" at prominent venues of late, including the 50th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival and the Isle of Wight.
  17. ↑ "Independent Music Awards". Independent Music Awards. September 23, 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-13.
  18. ↑ "Top40-Charts.com". Top40-Charts.com. Retrieved 2010-10-13.
  19. ↑ "11th Annual IMA Judges. Independent Music Awards. Retrieved on September 4, 2013.
  20. ↑ Blundell, Graeme. "Bang a gong as Rockwiz turns 10". The Australian. Retrieved March 16, 2013.
  21. ↑ Collins doesn't rest on laurels but looks for songs' surprises by John Soeder, Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 26, 2009
  22. ↑ "Testimony of Judy Collins in the Chicago Seven Trial". Law.umkc.edu. August 19, 1968. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
  23. ↑ Brozan, Nadine (July 9, 1996). "Chronicle". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-01.Roos, John (January 26, 1996). "Taking a Novel Approach; A Grieving Judy Collins Finds Writing a Book Helps the Healing Process". Los Angeles Times. p. 30. Retrieved 2008-08-01.
  24. ↑ "Judy Collins has painful talk about suicide". MSNBC Online. Associated Press. March 25, 2008.
  25. ↑ Interview by Wendy Schuman (February 17, 2011). "Judy Collins tells Beliefnet how she used meditation and prayer to cope with illness and her son's suicide.". Beliefnet.com. Retrieved 2012-10-16.
  26. ↑ "Biography for Judy Collins". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
  27. ↑ Judy Collins (October 1998). Singing lessons: a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing. Simon and Schuster. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-671-00397-5. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  28. ↑ Judy Collins (October 1998). Singing lessons: a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing. Simon and Schuster. pp. 172–190, 238–240. ISBN 978-0-671-00397-5. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  29. ↑ Hellmich, Nanci (June 18, 2007). "Son's suicide prodded Collins to write". USA Today. Retrieved November 25, 2013.
  30. ↑ Brady, Louis Smith (April 21, 1996). "Weddings: Vows; Judy Collins, Louis Nelson". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
  31. ↑ "Grammy Award Nominees 1964 – Grammy Award Winners 1964". Awardsandshows.com. 1964-05-12. Retrieved 2015-07-30.
  32. ↑ "Grammy Award Nominees 1968 – Grammy Award Winners 1968". Awardsandshows.com. 1968-02-29. Retrieved 2015-07-30.
  33. ↑ "Grammy Awards Nominees 1969 – Grammy Award Winners 1969". Awardsandshows.com. 1969-03-12. Retrieved 2015-07-30.
  34. ↑ "Grammy Award Ceremony 1970 – Grammy Award Winners 1970". Awardsandshows.com. 1979-03-11. Retrieved 2015-07-30.
  35. ↑ "Grammy Award Nominees 1976 – Grammy Award Winners 1976". Awardsandshows.com. 1976-02-28. Retrieved 2015-07-30.
  36. ↑ "Send in the Collins". Times Press Recorder. Retrieved March 16, 2013.
  37. ↑ "Judy Collins : Awards". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2015-07-31.
  38. ↑ "American album certifications – Judy Collins". Recording Industry Association of America. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH

External links

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Awards
Preceded by
Steve Earle		 First Amendment Center/AMA "Spirit of Americana" Free Speech Award
2005 		Succeeded by
Charlie Daniels
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