Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Sweet Judy Blue Eyes My Life in Music by Judy Collins Biography. Judy Collins has inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century. The award-winning singer-songwriter is esteemed for her imaginative interpretations of traditional and contemporary folk standards and her own poetically poignant original compositions. Her stunning rendition of Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now” from her landmark 1967 album, Wildflowers , has been entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Judy’s dreamy and sweetly intimate version of “Send in the Clowns,” a ballad written by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical A Little Night Music, won "Song of the Year” at the 1975 Grammy Awards. She’s garnered several top-ten hits gold- and platinum-selling albums. Recently, contemporary and classic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Shawn Colvin, Dolly Parton, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen honored her legacy with the album Born to the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins . Judy began her impressive music career at 13 as a piano prodigy dazzling audiences performing Mozart's “Concerto for Two Pianos,” but the hard luck tales and rugged sensitivity of folk revival music by artists such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger seduced her away from a life as a concert pianist. Her path pointed to a lifelong love affair with the guitar and pursuit of emotional truth in lyrics. The focus and regimented practice of classical music, however, would be a source of strength to her inner core as she navigated the highs and lows of the music business. In 1961, she released her masterful debut, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, which featured interpretative works of social poets of the time such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. This began a wonderfully fertile thirty-five-year creative relationship with Jac Holzman and Elektra Records. Around this time Judy became a tastemaker within the thriving Greenwich Village folk community and brought other singer-songwriters to a wider audience, including poet/musician Leonard Cohen – and musicians Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman. Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and up to the present, she has remained a vital artist, enriching her catalog with critically acclaimed albums while balancing a robust touring schedule. Prolific as ever, Judy recorded a DVD special Judy Collins: A Love Letter To Stephen Sondheim, in her hometown of Denver, CO. Along with the Greely Philharmonic Orchestra, Judy dazzled the audience with Sondheim’s beautiful songs and her lovely, radiant voice. DVD and CD companion will be released in early 2017. Judy also released a collaborative album in June 2016, Silver Skies Blue , with writing partner, Ari Hest. Silver Skies Blue has been GRAMMY nominated for BEST FOLK ALBUM in 2017, this is the first GRAMMY nomination for Collins in over 40 years. In 2012, she released the CD/DVD Judy Collins Live At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art which aired on PBS. This special television program was nominated for a New York Emmy and won a Bronze Medal at the 2013 New York Festival International Television & Film Awards. Based on its success, in 2014 she filmed another spectacular show in Ireland at Dromoland Castle . Live In Ireland was released in 2014. This program also won a Bronze Medal at the 2014 New York Festival International Television & Film Awards and the program will broadcast on PBS in 2014 and 2015. Judy’s most recent collaboration with her as a singer-songwriter is the 2019 album Winter Stories, including critically-acclaimed Norwegian folk artist Jonas Fjeld, and masterful bluegrass band Chatham County Line. Winter Stories , is a collection of classics, new tunes, and a few surprises, featuring spirited lead vocal turns, breathtaking duets, and Judy’s stunning harmony singing. Judy has also authored several books, including the powerful and inspiring, Sanity & Grace and her extraordinary memoir, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music . For her most recent title to be released in 2017, Cravings, she provides a no-holds barred account of her harrowing struggle with compulsive overeating, and the journey that led her to a solution. Alternating between chapters on her life and those of the many diet gurus she has encountered along the way (Atkins, Jean Nidtech of Weight Watchers, Andrew Weil, to name a few), Cravings is the culmination of Judy's genuine desire to share what she's learned—so that no one has follow her heart-rending path to recovery. In addition, she remains a social activist, representing UNICEF and numerous other causes. She is the director (along with Jill Godmillow) of an Academy Award-nominated film about Antonia Brico – PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN, the first woman to conduct major symphonies around the world–and Judy's classical piano teacher when she was young. Judy Collins is as creatively vigorous as ever, writing, touring worldwide, and nurturing fresh talent. She is a modern-day Renaissance woman who is also an accomplished painter, filmmaker, record label head, musical mentor, and an in-demand keynote speaker for mental health and suicide prevention. She continues to create music of hope and healing that lights up the world and speaks to the heart. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes : My Life in Music. A vivid, highly evocative memoir of one of the reigning icons of folk music, highlighting the decade of the ’60s, when hits like “Both Sides Now” catapulted her to international fame. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is the deeply personal, honest, and revealing memoir of folk legend and relentlessly creative spirit Judy Collins. In it, she talks about her alcoholism, her lasting love affair with Stephen Stills, her friendships with Joan Baez, Richard and Mimi Fariña, David Crosby, and Leonard Cohen and, above all, the music that helped define a decade and a generation’s sound track. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes invites the reader into the parties that peppered Laurel Canyon and into the recording studio so we see how cuts evolved take after take, while it sets an array of amazing musical talent against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent decades of twentieth-century America. Beautifully written, richly textured, and sharply insightful, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is an unforgettable chronicle of the folk renaissance in America. SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES. Some notes on the contents of Judy Collins's third memoir. As I mentioned, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is admirably free of grammatical errors. In fact; I noted only one possible error, and that turned out to be correct. But there are a few omissions and puzzling passages, and some things that are noteworthy. I'll discuss those things here. Quotations from the book are shown in blue. Page 19: Her suicide attempt, at age 14 (?), caused her parents considerable angst. But she never mentions her siblings' reactions. (They are Mike, David, Denver John, and Holly Ann.) She writes, "Of course, no one talked to me about what I had done, not directly. There was no counseling, no therapy, no group that I might go to, no suicide or grief counselor who would be sent for. These were still the dark ages for mental health issues." Page 21: "In 1950, long before the advent of the 'crossover' phenomenon, Stafford made the album American Folk Songs at the height of her popular success. In fact, the album was part of a folk music revival that was taking hold around the country. 'Barbara Allen' was on that album, along with 'Shenandoah' and 'Black is the Color.' Before I ever heard of Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger, Jo Stafford and Elton Hayes, the singer in the movie, put me in touch with the beauty and the wonder of folk music." The movie was The Black Knight , a 1954 Arthurian adventure starring Alan Ladd. Elton Hayes played the part of the minstrel, and sang the song that so grabbed Judy's attention: "The Gypsy Rover." Pages 22-23: Lingo the Drifter (Paul Lezchuk) This character deserves to be better known IMO. The same goes for her father, Chuck Collins, who she describes lovingly in the book. Blind since childhood, he got around better than some sighted people. Both he and Lezchuk had radio shows in Denver back in the day. Page 25: "Blondel, Richard the Lionheart's troubadour, saved his master's life by hunting out all the prisons where he might be kept and singing a song outside the castle walls until he heard Richard's response. He then sent for help to free his king." There was such a troubadour: Jean 'Blondel' de Nesle, a French trouvère . The story, however, appears to be legend, since Richard's jailers were proud of holding him. Page 29: "From his teenage years, Daddy always wore hand-painted glass eyes to cover the ravaged scar tissue left when he lost his sight as a child." On page 28, she says his sight began to fail almost from the time of his birth on an Idaho farm in 1911. So why the scar tissue? Page 31: The poems of Don Blanding, including "Vagabond House." Does this tie into Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House (a 1948 movie starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas)? Page 33: "But later, when I was nineteen and pregnant, my mother and I got rip-roaring drunk one afternoon. " Tragically, this was the dark ages for fetal alcohol syndrome, as well. There was little knowledge about this condition, which can lead to drug addiction in the child. Most authorities put these disabilities down to heredity; only in 1973 was FAS formally recognized by medical professionals. Page 41: She enrolled at MacMurray College in Illinois. She became pregnant with Clark, her only son, by Peter Taylor, and had to drop out. There followed lean years as she married Peter (when?) and they worked summers at Fern Lake Lodge high in the Colorado Rockies for a time, he chopping wood and tending the water system, she cooking and cleaning. She writes, "It still feels like paradise lost." I reach that, Judy; I really do. 1. Pages 48-50: When Clark was born they lived in Boulder. Peter was going for a BA in English literature; she had a job filing papers at the University of Colorado. Then Peter asked her, "Why don't you get a job doing something you know how do to? Like singing?" So, through her father's friend, she got an audition at Michael's Pub, a local pizza place. Despite the fact that the owner, Mike Bisesi, said he hated folk music, he hired her on the spot for $100 a week. From that day forward, Boulder had a folk-song club and Judy had a career. What puzzles me is the fact that someone had to suggest this to her. Something similar happened with songwriting: in this case it was Leonard Cohen who made the suggestion. (page 213) Pages 54-55: She had a gig at the Gilded Garter in Central City. The club was owned by Warren St. Thomas, who also ran The Tropics, Denver's premier strip club. She and Peter went to see Tempest Storm, "The girl with the fabulous front," and she admits to wondering why she herself does not have a fabulous front. Now I can't speak from first-hand knowledge, obviously, but to me this seems the sort of unjustified body worry that plagues women who become bulimic, as she later did. Page 55: A young fellow named Robert Zimmerman shows up at the Gilded Garter. He hails from Hibbing, Minnesota. Little does she know, then. Pages 59-60: Josh White, a confidant of FDR — blacklisted during the fifties, but now recording again. Page 69: "Will [Holt] had studied at Exeter and also at the Aspen School for American Minstrels. The school was started by the English countertenor Richard Dyer-Bennett. " I found little about this school online. Richard Dyer-Bennett started it soon after he and his wife moved to Aspen in 1947. But his career demanded he move back to New York City two years later. Apparently the school folded soon after that. Page 69: "One of the things I learned from Will [Holt] was that you could protest and be a force of change while looking dapper, being elegant, and having manners. You could cut like steel, sting like a wasp, go for the jugular with language, style, wit, and music while wearing a suit and tie." Page 102: She's too drunk to walk back alone to the Cass Hotel in Chicago at four in the morning — so Bob Gibson gives her a loaded gun. She's never handled a gun before. The result is predictable. Fortunately, no one gets hurt. Page 106: "What Walter knew about the physical act of love came as a revelation, like fireworks suddenly filling a black sky with brilliant light and electricity. I was simply overwhelmed." This seems incongruous, given the experience she's had by 1962. But who am I to judge? The one thing I know, after all these years, is that individual knowledge of sexuality, and its expression in the physical act of love, are as varied as human personality itself. Page 113: Senator Mike Mansfield visits Viet Nam, speaks out against the war: the first politician to do so, apparently. Pages 129-30: Harry Stack Sullivan's The Conditions of Human Growth and the Sullivanians, a cult that touted promiscuity and drinking. "But I sure got a lot of mileage out of the Sullivanian belief that alcohol was good for anxiety, and that having multiple sex partners was a political statement and a healthy lifestyle." Just as the "Sullivanians" got a lot of mileage out of being associated with the name of Harry Stack Sullivan, although most professionals felt they distorted his teachings. And Judy misattributes The Conditions of Human Growth : It was written by Jane Pearce and Saul Newton. Wikipedia: Page 141: "They were surreal together, entwined in the lights and the searing soul of the sixties. Some said they were that searing soul." "They" meaning Joan Baez and Bob Dylan (né Robert Zimmerman.) Page 153: The chapter lead-in quotes a line from "It Isn't Nice" . Malvina Reynolds wrote that ?! Speaking of searing souls. (Unlike other lead-in quote songs, "It Isn't Nice" is not indexed.) Page 153: "The journalist David Halberstam was openly criticizing the war in the New York Times , writing about the lies we were being told, helping to lift the veil of the 1950s, when we automatically believed that those in power told the truth." "What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?" The Mitchell Trio recorded that Tom Paxton song; a popular folk group of the 1960s and later, The Mitchell Trio is mentioned in the book (but not indexed); John Denver, who joined them in 1965 before launching a prominent solo career, is never mentioned. I find his omission very puzzling — especially given the name of Judy's brother. Page 160: "Also in 1964, Lenny Bruce spent four months in jail for obscenity; Michelle Obama and Glenn Beck were born; and it cost 5 cents to send a letter. " The index points to Lenny Bruce on this page, but not Michelle Obama or Glenn Beck. If they're important enough to mention, they're important enough to index. Page 162: Fannie Lou Hamer, sterilized without her knowledge in 1961. Page 233: "I didn't understand how drugs worked, actually, and the last time I had taken a pill out of a stranger's hand in L.A. at a rock-and-roll party, the pill turned out to be Thorazine. I spent twenty-four hours rolled into a ball in the corner of my host's living room. So I didn't usually do drugs." Thorazine (Chlorpromazine) is an anti-psychotic drug. From Wikipedia (emphasis added): Pages 291-2: "I then put together a team, starting with my co-director, Jill Godmilow, a talented New York documentary filmmaker who would share the directorial credits with me on Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman , which would later be nominated for awards at Sundance and other festivals for many films, including Waiting for the Moon ." This does not make sense; there must be some text missing after the word "festivals." In 2003, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman was designated by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. Legendary Gaze Burns Through Time and Trouble. Albert Grossman, who had put together Peter, Paul and Mary as a folk-singing trio, once suggested to Judy Collins that she become part of a trio too. She would sing with two other women, Judy Henske and Jo Mapes. “We can call you the Brown-Eyed Girls,” he said. The problem with that idea is apparent both on the cover and in the title of Ms. Collins’s lilting new memoir of a great musical career, five decades old and still going strong: she has the most transfixing, otherworldly blue high-beams ever seen above an acoustic guitar. She has eyes so blue that her onetime lover Stephen Stills once put them in a song title. Some combination of her eyes and voice once prompted Richard Fariña, the poet, songwriter and hell raiser who was her great friend, to write about her with the words “If amethysts could sing. . ” Anybody who has ever heard Ms. Collins — and it’s hard to imagine anyone who has not — knows exactly what he meant. As she writes in “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” (a play on Mr. Stills’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” which became a hit for Crosby, Stills and Nash), Ms. Collins decided against wearing brown contact lenses and singing with two partners. She had a strong sense of her own identity, even during the troubled and tumultuous times that her book describes. Although Ms. Collins has written other books about aspects of her life (among them creativity, dedication to art and a family struggle with addiction), this one is the omnibus, with the big story and the boldface names. It is written graciously and poignantly, with a big blue eye toward posterity. “My life has taken me from innocence to rage and back again,” she writes. “Those precious early years seem oddly clearer to me now, at 70. The people I knew and loved and the drama of that diamond-bright time move closer as they slip farther away.” Cue the music in your head, especially if you found any guilty pleasure in Sheila Weller’s “Girls Like Us,” a 2008 book about Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. Ms. Collins writes of her early years in Colorado with a blind father who had a Denver radio show (the song “My Father” comes to mind) and then her late teens in the mountains, running a rustic lodge with her first husband, Peter Taylor, and occasionally seeing a cowboy or two. (Think of the lovestruck familiarity with which she sings “Someday Soon.”) It was her husband, she says, who suggested that she try for a singing career, even though that would take her far from home and from their young son, Clark. Long years on the folk-singing circuit would eventually cost her custody of Clark after a bitter fight. Ms. Collins progressed from Denver to Chicago, where she saw the singer Bob Gibson and his banjo “charm the birds out of the trees” and took his advice to lighten up. Josh White, with whom she also performed in the late 1950s, had words of wisdom when Ms. Collins worried about an incipient drinking problem: “The travel will probably kill you before the whiskey does!” Ms. Collins is a contemporary of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk and other folk luminaries. That means her book can take its place among others about the early 1960s in New York, from David Hajdu’s “Positively Fourth Street” to Mr. Dylan’s “Chronicles: Volume One.” (That time and place will attract even more interest if the Coen brothers make a film about it, as they are said to be doing.) As “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” indicates, being soused did not keep her from being a reasonably keen observer of her contemporaries, even if she describes one of her love affairs as having lasted one night, two weeks or a month; in retrospect she finds it hard to tell. Her involvements with women, she says, “did confirm that I was really attracted to men.” ‘Sweet Judy Blue Eyes’ View Slide Show › She enjoyed the rare status of somebody who could get a song played on the radio in those days. So she became a magnet for writers, and she describes her relationships with many of them, from Joni Mitchell (chilly — and cue “Both Sides Now”) to Leonard Cohen (“Suzanne” and so many others). “I have always been grateful that I did not fall in love with Leonard in the way that I fell in love with his songs,” she writes. “I could have, certainly.” This book also describes Ms. Collins’s wildly counterproductive experience with Sullivanian therapy and how it contributed to the lyrics to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” a song about a standoff that only she and Mr. Stills understand; her struggles toward sobriety; the death of Clark, who had his own addiction problems; and her enduring relationship with Louis Nelson, whom she met in 1978 and married in 1996 and has been a mainstay in her life. Along the way there are the Oscar-nominated documentary, “Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman,” that she produced about her music teacher, Antonia Brico; her testimony at the trial of the Chicago Seven (she began to sing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” and the judge ordered her gagged, with an actual hand over her mouth); and her painful break with Elektra Records after a long and successful run there. Ms. Collins is not shy about opposing injustices. And Elektra’s treatment of her, she says, was one. Although much of the book’s attention is devoted to music, she also finds time to describe an eating disorder that led her to weigh herself — frequently — both with and without her earrings. And the list of those she thanks at the end of the book includes Coco Chanel. Ms. Collins has developed a ravishing visual identity to rival her aural one over those 50-odd years. Who knows where the time went? And who knows what Coco Chanel has to do with it? Posts Tagged ‘Judy Collins’ Press Release: Sweet Judy Blue Eyes by Judy Collins. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Contact: Tammy Blake. Crown Archetype Publicity. SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES: My Life in Music. By Judy Collins. The legendary singer, whose magical voice soothed a troubled world, reveals the memories behind the music, from her debut at age thirteen to the heyday of free love—and a long road to recovery from loss and addiction. “I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are.”—Stephen Stills, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” Her impressive career has spanned more than 50 years, but Judy Collins is best-known for evocative folk music of the 1960s and ’70s, including her Grammy-winning album, Wildflowers, which launched a mega-hit from a rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” With a voice that rings with clarity and hope, she captured both the innocence and the determination of a generation that tried to put an end to injustice, environmental destruction, and the nightmare of the Vietnam “conflict.” Yet Judy Collins’s personal life was anything but clear and hopeful, and as her career skyrocketed, her battles with depression, addiction, and heartache escalated as well. Tracing the complete story of her life journey, the extraordinary entertainer now shares details never before fully told in SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES: My Life in Music (Crown Archetype; On Sale October 18, 2011;16 Pages of Rare b/w Photographs). Recalling powerful episodes from a remarkable life, SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES also takes readers behind the scenes of a musical movement that became an enduring cultural soundtrack. With unflinching candor, Collins discusses: • Her turbulent childhood: Raised in a family of five children, Collins emerged as the one who might follow in the footsteps of her father, a blind singer and radio-show host. His career took him from Seattle to Hollywood to Denver, and he introduced Judy to many artists along the way. But he also struggled with alcoholism; his rages left indelible memories on Judy, who faced debilitating anxiety when she gave her first performances as a classically trained pianist. By the time she had graduated from high school, she had already made one attempt at suicide. • Her road to fame: At nineteen, in 1959, Collins was already a wife and mother. She writes tenderly of that idyllic time in the Rockies, where she lived simply and performed in small, local bars. Within two years, she would be immersed in the folk circuit, living with her husband and son on the east coast with regular gigs at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, the renowned club where countless others—including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie—would make a name for themselves. She’s been described as an overnight success, but SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES captures the singer’s years of dedicated performing before “Both Sides Now” became a hit in the late 1960s. She includes the star-studded festivals of Newport (where Dylan dared to go electric in a culture that revered the acoustic guitar) and the heart of the Laurel Canyon recording scene in California. From the creative energy of the studios to the mind-altering parties, Collins’s cast of characters includes Leonard Cohen, David Crosby, Dick and Mimi Fariña, and countless others who transformed the voice of American music. • Lovers, and lasting love: As her young marriage to Peter Taylor fell apart, Collins entered a world of experimentation and freedom from inhibitions, yet she craved emotional connections as much as physical ones. Throughout this memoir, she describes the intense highs and lows she reached in love, often with musicians and producers—reaching a calamitous, beautiful zenith with Stephen Stills and culminating in a tender romance with Louis Nelson, her husband and soul mate, who has been in her life for more than thirty years. • Battling depression and alcoholism: Many celebrities have written eloquently about their struggles with addiction, but Collins gives us an important new perspective, describing the many years she spent in world-class psychotherapy, in an era before addiction was fully acknowledged, much less studied, and AA carried a costly stigma. Throughout her despairing battles against mental illness and alcoholism, even the best psychiatrists failed to identify her addiction. The fact that she saw a therapist caused her to lose custody of her son, Clark, after an agonizing legal showdown. Collins describes her deliverance after friends checked her into an experimental rehab facility in 1978 and saved her life. It was a bittersweet triumph, however, as Clark also suffered from severe depression and addiction, ultimately taking his life. With a merciful heart and the wisdom of a survivor, Collins describes the path of her son’s fragile soul. • A love song to the courageous spirit of the Sixties: Recalling “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the song Stephen Stills wrote as his tempestuous relationship with Judy was burning out, Collins writes, “The song never fails to transport me to that thrilling and terrifying time we call ‘the Sixties,’ when so many great songs proclaimed our grand, noble visions. We were dreamers, hell-bent on finding our own personal happiness, determined to elevate all of humanity above the anger and violence of the past.” Throughout her book, Collins pays tribute to this spirit, from her efforts to uphold voting rights in segregated Mississippi to her testimony at the trial of the Chicago 7, where she was admonished by the judge for trying to sing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” from the witness stand. “Through all these years,” Collins writes, “I have been eternally grateful for the gift of music. … When we sing, we can do anything—change the world, bring peace, be our best selves at last. When we sing, our hearts can lift and fly, over the troubled waters and over the years.” With SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES , Collins has created a suite of memories that will echo in the minds of readers from every generation. JUDY COLLINS has recorded more than forty albums over her illustrious career. With several top-ten hits, Grammy nominations, and gold- and platinum-selling albums to her credit, she has also written several books and has her own music label, Wildflower Records. She remains a social activist, representing UNICEF and numerous other causes.