Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judy Collins was one of the major interpretive folksingers of the
'60s. A child prodigy at classical piano, she turned to folk music at
the age of 15 and released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow,
in 1961 when she was 22. That album and its follow-up, The Golden
Apples of the Sun, consisted of traditional folk material, with
Collins's pure, sweet soprano accompanied by her acoustic guitar
playing. By the time of Judy Collins #3, she had begun to turn to
contemporary material and to add other musicians. (Jim, later Roger,
McGuinn tried out his first arrangements of "The Bells of Rhymney" and
"Turn, Turn, Turn" on this album, before using them with The Byrds.)
Collins's musical horizons were expanded further by 1966 and the
release of In My Life, which added theater music to her repertoire and
introduced her audience to the writing of Leonard Cohen; it was one of
her six albums to go gold. Her first gold-seller, however, was 1967's
Wildflowers, which contained her hit version of "Both Sides Now" by the
then-little-known songwriter Joni Mitchell.
By the '70s, Collins had come to be identified as much as an art
song singer as a folksinger and had also begun to make a mark with her
original compositions. Her best-known performances cover a wide
stylistic range: the traditional gospel song "Amazing Grace," the
Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns," and such songs
of her own as "My Father" and "Born to the Breed." Collins recorded
less frequently after the end of her 23-year association with Elektra
Records in 1984, though she made two albums for Gold Castle. In 1990,
she signed to Columbia Records and released Fires of Eden, her 23rd
album. A move to Geffen preceded the 1993 release of Judy Sings
Dylan...Just Like a Woman; Shameless followed on Atlantic in 1994. Six
years later, Collins released the Christmas album All on a Wintry Night.