With Graceful Voice

by Peter Aaron, November 30, 2011

We here on Earth have lucky ears. Our collective tympanic membranes have been blessed with the divine voice of Judy Collins since the beginning of the late 1950s/early 1960s folk boom. Besides being one of the foremost singers of her generation, Collins, who will appear at the Egg in Albany this month, is one of the leading interpreters of the songs of others. Her early recordings of their compositions greatly popularized up-and-comers like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell (a 1967 Grammy-winning cover of the latter’s “Both Sides Now” helped establish Mitchell as a songwriter), and in 1975 she took Broadway tunesmith Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” into the pop charts. (Not that Collins has ever eschewed her traditional roots; her 1968 a capella version of “Amazing Grace” was a surprise hit.)

Collins was born in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a prominent local radio singer and program host. Her family later moved to Denver, Colorado, where she sang in choirs and school musicals and learned piano. By her teens she’d discovered folk music and switched to guitar, playing local coffeehouses before getting her first big break at Chicago’s Gate of Horn in 1960. Later that year she relocated to the East Coast, where she performed at New York folk clubs before being snapped up by Elektra Records and cementing her stardom with a trilogy of hugely selling folk rock LPs, In My Life (1966), Wildflowers (1967), and Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1968). Judy Collins will perform at the Egg in Albany on December 9 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $34.50.
(518) 473-1845; www.theegg.org.

Many listeners probably don’t realize you came from a classical background, having studied under conductor Dr. Antonia Brico. What made you want to play folk music?
The stories. Folk songs have such great stories, and I’ve always loved a good story. I can remember putting on a play of “Little Red Riding Hood” with my friends when I was very little, so I was already very interested in storytelling before I came to music. Of course, Mozart and Rachmaninoff have some seriously great stories in their music, too. But hearing songs like [English folk ballad] “The Gypsy Rover” just really got me.

You’re known for interpreting songs by artists who eventually became well known in their own right, like Leonard Cohen, an untried performer whose songs you debuted on In My Life. What was it that attracted you to his music?
Well, Leonard was pretty well known as a poet before he became a musician. But we met and he came to my place and played me three songs that I just loved: “The Stranger Song,” which I haven’t recorded yet, and the two I recorded for the album, “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag.” I wanted to do something different at that point and I loved that his songs were very dramatic, especially “Dress Rehearsal Rag.” He kept telling me how he couldn’t sing, but I told him he sounded great and that he should become a singer.

With In My Life you went from straight folk to a folk rock sound, even covering the Beatles and Donovan, which alienated a lot of your traditional folk audience. Were you surprised by that kind of response?
I didn’t know what people were thinking. I didn’t really pay that much attention—although I do remember how [music journalist] Richard Goldstein at the Village Voice just tore the album apart. Really, I think very few people understood what was going on in my personal evolution. But the album did very well and I had a great time, and I knew that I could move out from there and do what I wanted, musically. And so on the next album [Wildflowers] I ended up having a complete orchestra.