Judy Collins

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Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) 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 the lead single from her 1967 album Wildflowers, "Both Sides, Now" — written by Joni Mitchell — that gave Collins international prominence.

The single hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and won Collins her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.

She enjoyed further success with her recordings of "Someday Soon", "Chelsea Morning", "Amazing Grace", and "Cook with Honey". Collins experienced the biggest success of her career with her recording 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 non-consecutive 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.

Early life

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, pianist and radio show host, took a job in Denver, Colorado, in 1949, and the family moved there. Her grandfather was Irish.

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

Personal life

Collins has been married twice. Her first marriage in 1958 to Peter Taylor produced her only child, Clark C. Taylor, born the same year. The marriage ended in divorce in 1965. In April 1996, she married designer Louis Nelson, whom she had been seeing since April 1978. They lived in New York City.

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

Collins is the subject of the Stephen Stills composition "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", which appeared on the 1969 eponymous debut album of Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Collins 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. She 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, by suicide in 1992 at age 33 after a long bout with clinical depression and substance abuse. Since then, she has also become an activist for suicide prevention.

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Career

Collins played classical piano with Antonia Brico, making her public debut in Age 13 with Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos. Brico had a dim view of her growing interest in folk music, which led to her difficult decision to suspend her piano lessons. Brico was invited to one of her concerts in Denver years after she became well-known internationally. Brico took both of Collins' hands into her arms, wistfully at her fingers, and said, "You should have gone places," Brico said as they arrived. Later, she discovered that Brico herself had made money when she was younger, playing jazz and ragtime piano (Singing Lessons, pp. ). (72–72) She met several famous musicians in her early life through her father.

It was Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger's music as well as the early 1960s folk revival, but Collins' passion ignited her interest and reignited in her a love of lyrics. She was playing guitar three years after her debut as a piano prodigy. Michael's Pub in Boulder, Colorado, and the Denver folk club Exodus were her first public performances as a folk artist since graduating from Denver's East High School. Her music was particularly popular at the University of Connecticut, where her husband taught. She performed at parties and on the campus radio station with David Grisman and Tom Azarian.

Collins later moved to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she performed in clubs such as Gerde's Folk City before signing with Elektra Records, a company she had been associated with for 35 years. A Maid of Constant Sorrow, her first album, was released in 1961 at the age of 22.

Collins performed traditional folk songs or songs composed by others, particularly Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She recorded her own interpretations of classic songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn." She was also instrumental in bringing little-known musicians to a larger audience. For example, she performed songs by Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who became a close friend over the years. Eric Andersen, Fred Neil, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, and Richard Fari sang of her early debuts before gaining national recognition.

Collins' first few albums were based on simple guitar-based folk songs, but with In My Life, she began to include pieces from such diverse sources as the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, and Kurt Weill. Mark Abramson produced and Joshua Rifkin arranged the album, adding to the volume's lush orchestration. Collins' subsequent work over the next decade was a big departure for a folk artist, and it laid the groundwork for his subsequent work over the next decade.

Collins began to record her own songs on 1967 with her album Wildflowers, which was also produced by Abramson and arranged by Rifkin. In Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now," the album also won her a major hit and a Grammy award in December 1968. The Billboard Hot 100 reached No. 8 in February 1970, shortly after being ranked No. 8 on the charts. On the UK singles chart, 14 are in the top 14.

David Anderle and Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash) were both on tour with Collins' 1968 album Who Knows Where the Time Goes, who was a child in the United States. (She was the inspiration for Stills' CSN's classic "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." Time Goes was a mellow country sound, with Ian Tyson's "Someday Soon" and the title track, written by UK singer-songwriter Sandy Denny. Collins' composition "My Father" and one of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire"'s first covers were also on the album.

In the 1968 film The Subject Was Roses, two of Collins' songs ("Who Knows Where the Time Goes") were performed ("Who Knows Where the Time Goes" by Sandy Denny and "Albatross).

Collins had a solid reputation as an art song singer and folksinger by the 1970s, and she had begun to stand out for her own works. She was also known for her diverse range of music: her songs from this period included "Amazing Grace" by Stephen Sondheim's Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns," a compilation of Joan Baez's "A Song for David" and her own compositions, such as "Born to the Breed" and "Born to the Breed."

Living, Collins' second concert album, and the compilation Colors of the Day appeared a year later. True Stories and Other Dreams, 1973, found her in a reflective mood, with an original song about a friend who died ("Song for Martin") and another about Che Guevara ("Che"). Judith Lamb, a 1975 British singer, worked with producer Arif Mardin, giving the album a sophisticated look. Judith made her biggest hit single with her mournful interpretation of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," and it would become her highest-selling track, eventually reaching platinum.

The long-serving activist set political concerns at the forefront of 1976's Bread and Roses as Collins rose to a new level of fame. The title song, which was originally a poem by James Oppenheim and a 1912 garment workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was balanced by Elton John's "Come Down in Time," but the album was unable to replicate Judith's commercial success. Collins was hospitalized after the album's release, and after years of suffering with alcoholism, she sought medical assistance to avoid drinking. So Early in the Spring, 1977: The first 15 years in So Early in the Spring...

"Leather Winged Bat," "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," "Do Re Mi," and "Send in the Clowns" were Collins' appearances on The Muppet Show in January 1978. She also appeared on Sesame Street, where she performed "Fisherman's Song" with a chorus of Anything Muppet fishermen, performed the word "yes" with Biff and Sully, and even appeared in a modern musical fairy tale skit titled "The Sad Princess." She returned to music in 1979 with Hard Times for Lovers, a pop-oriented album in the same vein as Judith; with the cover sleeve photograph of her in the nude, she gained some extra exposure.

Running for My Life (1980) and Time of Our Lives (1982) were well-crafted exercises in adult pop and soft rock, but Collins' sales were on the decline as tastes changed. Home Again (1984) found herself exploring new musical avenues, including a synth-based version of Yaz' "Only You" and a duet with country singer T.G. Sheppard on the title cut. Although the "Home Again" album was a minor success, the album was not released, and Collins and Elektra parted ways after 23 years. She performed the songs for the 1983 animated film The Magic of Herself the Elf, as well as the Rankin-Bass TV film The Wind in the Willows.

Collins went to England in 1985 and signed a one-off contract with Telstar Records to record the album Amazing Grace, in which she re-recorded several of her best-known songs with an inspirational twist. In 1987, she signed for the independent Gold Castle brand and her first album for them, Trust Your Heart, which featured seven tracks from Amazing Grace and three new ones. She published Trust Your Heart in the same year as her first memoir, Trust Your Heart, was published in the United States.

Collins released two albums in 1989: Sanity and Grace, a live disc released by the composer, and a Innervoices project with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman.

On Columbia Records, Collins released Fires of Eden in 1990. Kit Hain and Mark Goldenberg's "Fires of Eden" became the album's single. The single reached No. 4 on the charts. On Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, 31. Collins appeared on many occasions, including on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Joan Rivers Show, at the time of its unveiling. A music video promoting it and starring her was also released. Cher's 1991 album Love Hurts was released on "Fires of Eden" later in the year. "The Blizzard," "Home Before Dark," and a remix of The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe" are among the Fires of Eden's tracks. Two children's albums, Baby's Morningtime, and Baby's Bedtime were all released in the same year. Collins performed "Amazing Grace" and "Chelsea Morning" at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993. Chelsea is the Clintons' daughter after her music, according to her.)

Collins decided on a project that was both personal and familiar, namely Judy Collins Sings Dylan: Just Like a Woman. The album, which was released in 1993, was a commercial success, and it reminded fans that it was still available and in fine voice. Come Rejoice, she released her first Christmas album in 1994. A Judy Collins Christmas. It would be the first in a series, with more holiday launches coming shortly, the first being the live album Christmas at the Biltmore Estate in 1997 and All on a Wintry Night in 2000. Collins' next project combined her passions in music and literature. Shameless, she wrote a book set against the backdrop of the music industry in 1995; she also released an album of the same name that served as the soundtrack.

Collins' third book, Singing Lessons: A Memoir of Love, Loss, Hope, and Healing, which portrayed her struggle with alcoholism, depression, and the emotional trauma of her son's death. Classic Broadway, a series of vintage show tunes, was released in 1999 by the artist. Wildflower Records was established by Katherine DePaul, her manager, in the same year.

Collins kept a bouncing schedule on Wildflower, releasing numerous live albums and reissues as well as recent releases such as 2005's Portrait of an American Girl, 2010's Paradise, and 2011's Bohemian, all of which concentrated on her continuing success as an interpretive singer. In a commercial for Eliot Spitzer in 2006, she sang "This Little Light of Mine" in a commercial. Judy Collins Sings Lennon and McCartney made her own covers collection of Beatles songs in 2007. Various musicians, including Shawn Colvin, Rufus Wainwright, and Chrissie Hynde, all worked on Collins' compositions for the tribute album Born to the Breed in 2008. She was given an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute in the same year. Tom Thumb's Blues: A Tribute to Judy Collins and Born to the Breed Judy Collins appeared in 2000 and 2008 respectively.

Collins performed "The Weight of the World" at the Newport Folk Festival in 2010, a song by Amy Speace. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music, Collins' second memoir, appeared the following year and placed the emphasis on her work as an artist. She appeared as a guest artist on the Australian SBS television show RocKwiz in July 2012. With the 2015 album Strangers Again, Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, Jeff Bridges, and Glen Hansard, she paid tribute to some of her favorite writers as well as her favorite singers. Ari Hest, a singer and songwriter, was also on the album. Collins and Hest joined forces in 2016 for the full album titled Silver Skies Blue, which later earned them a Grammy Award nomination for Best Folk Album.

Collins recalled the songwriter who gave her "Send in the Clowns" in a love letter to Stephen Sondheim in 2017, and Everybody Knows collaborated on an album in 2017. In addition to the two albums, she opened Cravings: How I Conquered Food, in which she discussed her complicated relationship with food and her years of dealing with eating disorders. In 2019, she released the album Winter Stories, a collaboration with Norwegian singer Jonas Fjeld and the Chatham County Line, a North Carolina country-folk quartet. Spellbound, her first album of all original content, was released in 2022.

Collins was nominated for the National Independent Music Awards' 7th, September 10th, 11th, 13th, and 14th Annual Independent Music Awards on Saturday.

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