Subject: Judy Collins - Happy Birthday From: GUEST,Lin Date: 01 May 22 - 04:18 PM Today, May 01, 2022 is Judy Collins birthday. Turns 83 years old today. Hope your day is wonderful. Just yesterday I received two Judy Collins CD's that I had ordered. "White Bird" and "Spellbound." Listened to both last night and today. Great albums. Beautiful songs. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Joe Offer Date: 01 May 22 - 08:39 PM My ex bought us tickets for a Judy Collins concert, and then Judy had to cancel because of throat problems and I missed my only chance to see her perform. I've loved her singing since the 1960s, and I'm glad that it appears that she's still performing at the age of 83. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,Lin Date: 01 May 22 - 10:12 PM Hi Joe, I just read your post. I had a similiar experience. An ex-boyfriend had bought tickets as well to see Judy at the Universal Amphitheater near Los Angeles, many, many years ago. I think it was about late 1970's. So we drive to see the concert and on the large marquee on the road that you would drive up to get to the amphitheater we see the message, JUDY COLLINS CONCERT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. I never found out the reason, no internet in those days. So...I too missed the concert. However, I did see Judy many years later at a different venue. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Joe Offer Date: 02 May 22 - 05:21 AM Hi, Lin- But I take the choir director out to happy hour regularly to keep her lubricated... We're Catholic, so we're encouraged to drink....She tends toward the born-again stuff, so she feels guilty. But hey, we have fun. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Joe Offer Date: 02 May 22 - 05:47 AM And there has always been talk about Judy Collins having slept with all those geeky guys on the Byrds Family Tree, and her being the subject of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. And maybe all of this is beyond us Enlightened Liberals, but it will forever be true that Judy Collins was and is the dream of all of us geeky but lovable males who reached puberty in the 1960s.... Is that right, or is it not? That is something that we Enlightened Males will agonize about far beyond the point where we are able to get horny about all this stuff. And still, the dream of Judy Collins remains... And just at the point where we Enlightened White Male Liberals think we have everything sorted out about our obsessions about Judy Collins and all those troubling thoughts, along comes a group called Foxes and Fossils, and our days of confliction start all over again..... |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,henryp Date: 02 May 22 - 06:13 AM Behind the polished performer, there has been a very troubled person. "I had an eating disorder for years. It really kicked in when I gave up smoking. I was always on diets. Everything was very extreme and I never gained a lot of weight because I was always exercising. I discovered exercise very early on, and for me, that’s the big secret. It’s endorphins. If I’m exercising every day, I’m fine. I really am. If I’m not, I’m in trouble, but I learned that very early on, even in the dark days of my drinking. It’s probably what kept me alive. "As I said, I inherited the “Irish bug” from my father, who liked to drink. Although I looked good on paper – I had hit records, and concerts all over the world, I couldn’t work most of 1977. My life was a total shambles. I couldn’t sing. I had lost my voice. I am quite sure it was the booze. I had a hemangioma on my vocal cord. My doctor said, “If you do this [operation] you have a chance but if you don’t do it, you have no chance and you’ll never sing again.” That was my choice and I had the operation and it worked. Then I stopped drinking. I finally went into treatment and got the help that I needed in 1978." It's ironic that someone who has brought so much pleasure to so many people has suffered so much herself. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Reinhard Date: 02 May 22 - 08:49 AM "there has always been talk about Judy Collins having slept with all those geeky guys" That's her private life and should be none of our business. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,Lin Date: 02 May 22 - 04:53 PM Joni Mitchell too. She had many of well known musician guys after her too, and a few actors thrown in, especially when she was young, starting out with David Crosby of the Byrds, about mid 1960's in Florida (where they met at a folk club) This is in some books I read several years ago. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Felipa Date: 02 May 22 - 06:02 PM I had a better experience of seeing Judy Collins, about 10 years ago. She received an award from the "Irish American Writers and Artists" and she was in good form that night. She looked and sang well. I don't remember what she sang. It wasn't a concert as such but there were a few speeches and songs. Pete Seeger (1919-2014) was there and he sang also ... I was speaking with him and he was quite deaf, but Pete was still able to sing and play. I had heard Pete saying on the radio a couple of times that he had some memory problems. But he had no problems with the lyrics that night, or the other two times I saw him at about the age of 90 - once in Central Park, NYC with his grandson, once at the Clearwater Fest in Beacon N.Y. Pete's birthday is May 3rd. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Felipa Date: 02 May 22 - 06:08 PM transcript of 2012 interview with Judy Collins https://iamwa.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/judy-collins-in-conversation/ |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,Lin Date: 02 May 22 - 06:27 PM Hey Joe, Do you remember that song from the 1960's called "Surfer Joe" by the Surfaris. "Down in Doheny where the surfers all go There's a big bleach blonde named Surfer Joe He's got a green surfboard and a Woody to match And when he's ridin' the freeway's man is he hard to catch Surfer Joe Now, look at him go-o-o-o-o Surfer, surfer, surfer Joe-o-o Oh-oh-oh oh Surfer Joe. Ha, ha ha, that one goes out to you Joe Offer. Don't know if you were a surfer or had a Woody or not. I was just a kid when that song came out, maybe 9 or 10. Ok,I know, NOT folk music but just having a bit of fun today. ???????????? |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Felipa Date: 02 May 22 - 06:37 PM Joe and Lin, you may still have a chance to hear Judy Collins as she is still working. And as recently as 2020, she performed as far away as Liverpool, England. Judy Collins - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Collins In 2019 at the age of 80, she scored her first No. 1 album on an American Billboard Chart with Winter Stories, a duet album with Jonas Fjeld featuring the Chatham County Line. In 2022, she released her first album of all original material, entitled Spellbound ... some articles from Judy Collins 80th year: https://seriesnews.biz/judy-collins-the-80-years-old-lady-with-a-voice-of-20-years/ https://nexttribe.com/judy-collins-birthday/ Fox news item Dec 2021, Judy Collins touring at age 82 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwlyTm4TXa0 also a video at https://www.thelastbohemians.co.uk/judy https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/arts/music/judy-collins.html https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=38827 shared an article from The Daily Telegraph: 19th January 2020 |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,Lin Date: 02 May 22 - 06:54 PM Hi Felipa, Thanks so much for all the links for Judy Collins. Much appreciated. I have the latest CD called Judy Collins Spellbound. It is a great CD and especially love the song, When I Was A Girl in Colorado. Beautiful photos of Judy in the booklet. Only complaint is the font inside with album information and printed lyrics is EXTREMELY small. I actually have very, very good eye sight for close-up but quite difficult to read all the information in the booklet. Will have to get my magnifying glass out. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,henryp Date: 03 May 22 - 04:47 PM And it seems like you are going to keep going until you fall over. What drives you to keep performing? It’s very compelling what I do. I think I have a compelling life. I write books, I write songs, I record, I make CDs. I travel. I tour. I think it’s important to keep working. I would never retire. Never, ever. Unless I am pushed off the stage or a cliff, I don’t think I will be retiring. UK 2022 29 June Bristol Beacon August Shrewsbury Folk Festival 28 August Cottingham Folk festival 11 November - 21 November UK Tour |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GUEST,Lin Date: 03 May 22 - 08:23 PM To Henry P That's really great that you are involved with all these artistic things. How can I look up information about your CD'S and books? |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: Joe Offer Date: 03 May 22 - 09:23 PM Lin, Henry P was quoting from a 2013 interview of Judy Collins in Irish America Magazine from June/July 2013: It all began with a song. As a young 14-year-old, Judy Collins heard “The Gypsy Rover” on the radio and it changed the course of her life. She was studying classical piano and had already made her orchestral debut, but the ballad, a tale of a girl who runs off with a dashing stranger, won her heart. She persuaded her father to get her a guitar, broke her piano teacher’s heart, and began the musical journey that would take her out of Colorado and put her on the road to being recognized of one of the greatest singers of our time. Collins made her first album in 1961, at age 22, won a Grammy Award in 1968 for “Both Sides Now,” made the cover of Life in 1969, and today, more than 40 albums later, at least six of them Gold, she is still recording and playing concerts – up to 100 a year. Collins has lived in the same New York City upper west side apartment for over 40 years. She shares the space with her husband, Louis Nelson, the artist known for the Korean War memorial in Washington, D.C., whom she met in 1978, and their three cats, Coco (black and white), Tom Wolfe (white), and Rachmaninoff (gray). The apartment reflects the artistic nature of the occupants: a grand piano in the living room, walls filled with art work, including paintings by Judy’s sister Holly, family photos, Tiffany lamps, Buddhas and other artifacts, and a recording studio. For a number of years now, Collins had been recording her own albums, and a handful of other artists. Collins is physically lithe and carries herself with the grace of a dancer. She is unhurried, though she’s packing a full schedule. Her body, toned from daily exercise, and her clear skin belie the illnesses of her youth – polio when she was 10, TB in her early 20s, hepatitis and mono, spinal and leg injuries from a fall, and later struggles with an eating disorder, and addictions to alcohol and cigarettes. Born in Seattle on May 1, 1939, Collins moved with her family to Los Angles at age 10 and shortly thereafter settled in Denver, where her father Charlie Collins hosted a radio show. Blind since the age of 3, Charlie had grown up on a farm in Idaho and had learned to maneuver the world without a cane. Educated at a school for the blind, he was well versed in literature, world affairs, and music, and the five Collins children, three girls and two boys, were brought up knowing that much was expected of them. At 19, Judy married Peter Taylor and soon gave birth to their son, Clark. To support the family while her husband was in college, Collins sang in bars around Denver. After his graduation, the young couple moved East, where Peter taught English literature at the University of Connecticut, and Judy became popular on the college radio station. But the folk scene was taking off in Greenwich Village in New York City, and this is where Judy was drawn, as were other artists of the day. Judy would meet them all, and record many of their songs – Bob Dylan (while they were guests at Albert Grossman’s house she listened outside Dylan’s bedroom door as he composed “Tambourine Man”), Leonard Cohen (who challenged her to write her own songs), and Joni Mitchell whose song “Both Sides Now” proved a breakthrough hit for Collins, earning her a Grammy Award in 1968. She also met the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, who were on the scene when she was offered her first record deal. On that album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, released in 1961, the 22-year-old Collins would record three Clancy standards, “A Bunch of Thyme,” “Bold Fenian Men” and “The Rising of the Moon.” As her career was taking off, Collins’ marriage was breaking down. While she was plying her trade and learning her craft she was missing out on her son’s early life. And in the spring of 1962, she met Walter Raim, a guitar player who would be the catalyst for the breakup of her marriage. The affair didn’t last but the ramifications did – divorce and a custody battle for her son, which she lost. It would be several years before she would have custody of Clark again. Throughout her life, no matter what was happening to her personally, Collins was, and is, a committed social activist. In the 60s and 70s she supported civil rights, and women’s rights, and she traveled South to register black voters. She was in on the founding of the Yippie movement and testified in support of the Chicago Seven during their trial, angering the judge when she sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” on the witness stand. With the 1966 album In My Life, Collins moved away from straightforward folk music, and has remained untethered to one genre of music. She has a knack of finding a good song and breathing life into it. Her 1968 recording of “Amazing Grace” brought the 18th-century hymn back into the present day (it was top of the charts both in the U.K. and U.S.), and it has remained part of our cultural consciousness. Stephen Sondheim’s “Send In the Clowns” was also a huge hit. She appeared with the Boston Pops Orchestra and on the Muppet Show, and made many appearances on Sesame Street. She even took a turn on the New York stage, appearing with Stacy Keach (whom she lived with for a time) in the 1969 revival of Peer Gynt. Collins also produced and co-directed an award-winning documentary on her former piano coach Antonia Brico (1974). And she has written several books based on her life, in which she tackles difficult issues such as the suicide of her son Clark in 1992, and her own battle with alcoholism. Her books include Sanity and Grace: A Journey of Suicide Survival and Strength (2006), and Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music (2011). The latter title comes from the song written about her by Stephen Stills. (The two met in 1967 and had a two-year passionate affair.) Today, Collins continues to pursue her creative passions. She created her own label, Wildflower Records, in 2000 to record her own music and support the work of other artists. She writes songs and books and continues to perform. When we met at her apartment in late April, she had recently had a guest spot on the TV series Girls (she said it gave her street cred with her nieces and nephews) and was preparing for a June 8 concert at the Town Hall, New York. She was also planning a trip to the U.K. and Ireland, where she will record a concert for PBS, and where she will be inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame in New Ross on June 21. Was music part of your childhood? Was your father disappointed when you gave up classical piano? Tell me about him. Do you know from whence the Collins hail? How well did you know the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem? You had a big hit with Leonard Cohen’s song “Suzanne.” Can you tell me about your relationship? I saw him the other night and he said, “I owe you so much” and I said, “No, the debt is mine” because if he’d never asked me why I wasn’t writing songs, I never would have. And didn’t you push him to perform his own work? You also had a hit with Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” before Joni was well known. Can you tell me about artists’ rights and royalties: How does it work? Do you miss the way recordings were made – the sound of the needle on vinyl? How do you keep your voice in such good shape? Did his method involve vocal exercises? His philosophy was that there was one voice: singer, speaker – it was all one instrument and you could either wreck it or you could use it until you fell over. And it seems like you are going to keep going until you fall over. What drives you to keep performing? Do you get nervous before you perform? Because you do yoga and meditate? Do you watch what you eat? Do you think there’s a genetic component to alcoholism and depression? Wasn’t it around this time that you met your husband, Louis Nelson? How did you get through that dark period following your son’s suicide? There was no way for me to deal with it unless I talked about it. I had to go to lots of survivor group meetings and I had to think about who was doing what about it. As the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death nears, what are your memories? Do you still believe music will heal the world? I did a concert at the Metropolitan Museum, and one day I was having lunch with Emily Rafferty, the museum president. We were talking about the power of art and how people need it – no matter who you are and where you are – to deal with just being on the planet. Emily said that the day after 9/11, [Mayor] Giuliani, in one of his more intelligent and gracious moments, called her and said, “You must open the museum.” She said, “How can I – there are no phones, everything is down.” Somehow, through word of mouth, and running around town and finding the staff, they opened. She said thousands of people just streamed into the museum in the following days because in the museum, they could see that people had lived through horrors before and survived. It was a touching thing. Can you talk about “Kingdom Come,” your own anthem to 9/11, and how it came about? That image really stuck with me, and I would talk about it a lot, until finally my husband said, “Why don’t you write a song about it?” We were up in the country at the time so I found a way to do it on the guitar, and when I thought I had it, I sang it in a number of firehouses for the crews because I wanted to be sure I got it right. I’ve met some incredible firefighters. One of them, Captain Jim McGrath, lost 91 friends that day. Can you imagine? Your whole working population from your firehouse and others, just I think artists will continue to write about it, and think about it a lot, and since this new terrorist attack in Boston, which is what it was, I think there’s a renewed feeling of what a new and terrible world it is in a lot of ways. There were so many protests in the 60s and 70s. Do you think today’s young people are apathetic? What do you have on your iPod? What’s your favorite song that you’ve written? She passed away at 94, in December 2010. She was quite a lady. She had a kind of, I want to say stillness and ability to go through what was demanded of her that was really quite remarkable, and she was a great cook and a great housekeeper and she had a great sense of humor. She was – we called her the original party girl. I think of her putting on her Chanel perfume and her pretty clothes and she was off to the races. She’d dance all night. Do you believe in an afterlife? Thank you, Judy Collins. |
Subject: RE: Judy Collins Happy Birthday - born May 1, 1939 From: GerryM Date: 04 May 22 - 07:11 PM I've probably mentioned this already on Mudcat (maybe several times), but I was at the WBAI benefit concert where Judy Collins had Leonard Cohen make his debut. My recollection is that it was only on his third try that he got all the way through "Suzanne". Also on the bill for that concert: The Mitchell Trio, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and Patrick Sky. |
Share Thread: |
Subject: | Help |
From: | |
Preview Automatic Linebreaks Make a link ("blue clicky") |