Judy Collins

Legendary singer enthralls audience at Base31

The applause started the moment Judy Collins opened the door to enter the auditorium in the Sergeants Mess Hall at Base31 last Wednesday evening. Looking slim and elegant in a royal blue jacket atop a black-beaded tunic and trousers, Ms. Collins gracefully accepted the accolades, and then picked up her 12-string guitar to begin her performance. At eighty-four years old, her voice has retained the range and timbre of her younger days, and she sang a number of songs that have become classic hallmarks of her career, including Both Sides Now, Suzanne and Mr. Tambourine Man. In between she spoke of her life growing up as a teenager in Denver and moving to New York City in the early sixties to establish her professional career. Her father was a blind musician and radio announcer in the ’50s, and Ms. Collins became a member of the Denver Folklore Society, learning classic folk tunes as well as songs from the Great American Songbook. In those days, she said her father introduced her to some guy who kept singing “This land is your land, this land is my land…” She was trained in classical piano, and her teacher felt she had great potential, but early in her teens she picked up a guitar and that set her on a new path.

She recorded her first album in 1961 and was part of the Greenwich Village scene through the mid-sixties. Here she came across the work of a relatively unknown poet named Leonard Cohen, and set his words to music. He would later say to Ms. Collins that she was the one who made him famous. She said she wasn’t really part of the drug scene back in those days, mostly because she was afraid it would interfere with her drinking. She remembers one night where she was sleeping—practically comatose, she said—and was awakened by the telephone ringing at 3 a.m. It was the lead singer from the band Blood, Sweat & Tears and he wanted her to listen to a young singer named Joni Mitchell.

At another party and another night of drinking, she was awakened by a haunting melody, following the sound to find Bob Dylan singing.

Over her career, she had recorded more than 50 albums and numerous singles. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, and has had seven Grammy nominations, with a win in 1969 for Best Folk Recording for Both Sides Now. Last year she completed Spellbound, the first album to feature solely her own work. She has had a remarkable longevity in the music business, and has no intention of slowing down. “I love what I do, I always want to keep on going further. I love to try new things, I love to make albums, to discover songwriters and to write my own songs,” she said. “I’ve been writing for years, ever since Leonard Cohen told me that I should be, in 1966, so I’ve been writing since then.” She is currently on tour and maintaining a busy schedule. “Touring is probably the hardest thing we ever do, but I happen to love it. My life is a tour. It’s nothing special or unusual; it’s what I do all the time. I don’t have to conserve my energy. I always have to be healthy—eating healthy, exercising, sleeping, that’s it.” She said it doesn’t matter to her if she plays to an audience of ten people or to an audience of thousands. “I prefer to be wherever I am. My father used to say—and he was a great performer—‘ don’t worry about the size of the audience. It could be Queen Elizabeth sitting there.’”

Garnet Rogers opened the concert for Judy Collins. He has a strong baritone voice and extraordinary skill on guitar. He sang newer songs that he had written, rather than the songs he played with his late brother Stan. He did, however read an excerpt from the book he wrote about touring with Stan and his band, recounting an episode of meeting up with a group of bikers on a particular Friday the thirteenth in Port Dover when he was 14 years old. Ms. Collins invited Garnet back on stage for the final two songs, where he told her that Stan had a huge crush on her. “That’s just the thing that a girl likes to hear,” she replied. They ended the night with a song made famous by Stan, Northwest Passage.