Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. To kick off our
Speaker 1: celebration of Women's History Month, we have the great singer
Speaker 1: and interpreter of song, Judy Collins, who, at eighty two
Speaker 1: years old, is in the midst of a creative shift
Speaker 1: in the way she works. Collins made her name during
Speaker 1: the sixties folk Revival, covering songs by other artists like
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, using her crisp soprano to
Speaker 1: transform them. But this year, for the first time in
Speaker 1: her career, she's released an album written entirely by herself.
Speaker 1: The album's called Spellbound, in the music feels right at
Speaker 1: home with some of the best in her catalog. Here's
Speaker 1: her song When I Was a Girl in Colorado, a
Speaker 1: sweet ode to the beautiful land of the West. Nestled
Speaker 1: between soft pedal steel, Judy Collins has managed to retain
Speaker 1: the vibrancy in her voice that made her a commodity
Speaker 1: all those years ago in the East Village and has
Speaker 1: kept pushing the bounds of her creativity. She tells Bruce
Speaker 1: Hedlam on today's episode about her recent burst of activity,
Speaker 1: which not only includes this album, but five others. That's
Speaker 1: six in the last six years. They also discussed her
Speaker 1: working relationship with Leonard Cohen and how she actually lived
Speaker 1: the rugged life that peers like Dylan could only sing about.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam with Judy Collins. Since
Speaker 1: you've turned eighty, you've got your first number one, and
Speaker 1: you're touring, and you've got this great new album. Everyone
Speaker 1: should hear. Particularly the version of sending the Clowns with
Speaker 1: just a piano is so beautiful, good, so beautiful, and
Speaker 1: such a beautiful ending to that album. This new album
Speaker 1: coming out, in which I've written all the songs. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of writing anyway, but I wrote a
Speaker 1: lot of songs during the pandemic, polished up a bunch
Speaker 1: that had been hanging around waiting to be looked at
Speaker 1: and taken seriously. And it was challenging. But I've some
Speaker 1: some of those songs in concert now and we'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm very happy with it. That's exciting. When you heard songs,
Speaker 1: how did you know this is a song for me?
Speaker 1: I can make this work. Well, that's DNA, that's history.
Speaker 1: That's what you were like as a child. That's what
Speaker 1: you heard. That's how you were trained. That's how you
Speaker 1: learned how to learn all the songs of the Great
Speaker 1: American Songbook, which my father made our living with singing.
Speaker 1: Your father was a musician, we should say, yes. He
Speaker 1: was a wonderful singer. And then I was born in
Speaker 1: thirty nine. And then he went on to have a
Speaker 1: radio career which lasted thirty years, and we went from
Speaker 1: Seattle to la to Denver. I was always able to
Speaker 1: see him perform and hear him perform, and watch and
Speaker 1: learn how to do this thing to have a career,
Speaker 1: and the secret being you show up on time in
Speaker 1: most cases and you do your work. No matter how
Speaker 1: much he drank, he always was happy in the morning
Speaker 1: and clear. And I don't know how he did it,
Speaker 1: but I learned to do something in my career and
Speaker 1: not have it be blown apart by my tendency to
Speaker 1: drink too much, which I really think I learned that
Speaker 1: from him. You're drinking, which was prodigious, prodigious, Yeah, did
Speaker 1: it ever interfere? Were their mornings you couldn't perform, or
Speaker 1: evenings you couldn't perform, Not until the last year, until
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and then I was canceling right and left.
Speaker 1: I didn't drink on stage until that year either, and
Speaker 1: I always would keep the day clear, and then I
Speaker 1: would drink after the show. I knew by the time
Speaker 1: it was nineteen that I had a real problem, but
Speaker 1: I never tried to quit. I mean, who would you know.
Speaker 1: As long as things were going well, you certainly didn't
Speaker 1: want to quit. He also had a life in Colorado
Speaker 1: that was quite adventurous. You. I mean, you got married young,
Speaker 1: you had a child young, but you cooked at a
Speaker 1: sort of national park. You always seemed to be climbing
Speaker 1: mountains and doing crazy things. You had the life that
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan and a lot of the other people in
Speaker 1: the village pretended to have. They all pretended to be
Speaker 1: these rough characters who've been riding the rails and cooking
Speaker 1: at lumber camps. And you're like, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: did that. You didn't do anything. Yeah, I did that.
Speaker 1: I had started singing for money in March of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. I sang at a little club called Michael's
Speaker 1: Pub Boulder, and then I sang in the mountains in
Speaker 1: Central City, and then I was hired to sing in
Speaker 1: Denver and I started traveling back and forth from Boulder,
Speaker 1: which is where we lived and my husband was in school,
Speaker 1: to Boulder Boulder Denver Turnpike, dangerous road in those days.
Speaker 1: We got two offers. I got an offer of six
Speaker 1: weeks at the Gate of Horn to open four at
Speaker 1: that point it was Will Holt and my husband and
Speaker 1: I got an offer to because a lot of our
Speaker 1: friends were park rangers. We knew the Long's Peak ranger
Speaker 1: whom we'd met in the mountains in fifty eight, and
Speaker 1: we'd run the lodge and I cooked on with stoves,
Speaker 1: and we'd served the lunches to the hikers, and we
Speaker 1: got to know a whole community of people. I was
Speaker 1: traveling back and forth, of course, to sing, and we
Speaker 1: were offered a firewatch. Meantime, I had broken my leg
Speaker 1: and had a urgery and was in a cast from
Speaker 1: my toes to my hip. This was in the spring
Speaker 1: of sixty. They offered us the job, and we went
Speaker 1: up to Genesee Park it's called. So we went up
Speaker 1: there for lunch one day and our little boy was
Speaker 1: about a year and a half old, I think, and
Speaker 1: we had lunch and we talked about it. What are
Speaker 1: we going to do. Are we going to move to
Speaker 1: Chicago so you can do the get of Horn or
Speaker 1: are we going to take the risk of your being
Speaker 1: in this cast and take a firewatch at Twin Sisters. Well,
Speaker 1: I was the breadwinner, so to speak, and I was
Speaker 1: not going to be very helpful if I could not move,
Speaker 1: if there was a fire, and I couldn't get on
Speaker 1: a horse and I couldn't walk in this cast. That's
Speaker 1: when we decided to go to Chicago. And that was
Speaker 1: really that moment in my life where I knew that
Speaker 1: I was not going to live in Colorado and be
Speaker 1: part of the mountain scene for my adult life, but
Speaker 1: that is going to go on this and do this
Speaker 1: career and do this thing that I do. When did
Speaker 1: you tell your husband that the cast was fake? After
Speaker 1: I knocked him down the hill? Yeah? What was it
Speaker 1: like for you when you started writing? The world changed
Speaker 1: and the sort of curators like Joan Bayes that went
Speaker 1: out of fashion, and so I think you singer songwriters,
Speaker 1: did you feel pressure that you had to write to
Speaker 1: maintain your career? No, no, no, no, I didn't. I
Speaker 1: mean my career was finding other people's songs and doing
Speaker 1: them the way I wanted to, and my writing is
Speaker 1: completely part of my psyche, and no, it was keeping
Speaker 1: me on the planet is why I write. And ever
Speaker 1: since I wrote, since you've asked, I've never stopped writing songs.
Speaker 1: And what was since you've asked about? Well, the title,
Speaker 1: since you've asked, you know, Al Cooper said to me,
Speaker 1: why are you not writing songs? And then the answers
Speaker 1: since you've asked, I'll show you. So what was it
Speaker 1: like when you you performed all these incredible songs you'd
Speaker 1: been on stage and then suddenly you're sitting down saying,
Speaker 1: well can I do this? Did you write it a piano? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I write everything at the piano, and that's where I
Speaker 1: grew up, at the piano, so it was a natural thing.
Speaker 1: It was always there. The whole question of noodling and
Speaker 1: finding a melody and a lyric did not occur to
Speaker 1: me until that moment. And I wrote a bunch of
Speaker 1: songs that were pretty interesting at that beginning. Since you've asked,
Speaker 1: and my father I wrote that I wrote Albatross in
Speaker 1: that first I wrote a song called Jay about che Guevera.
Speaker 1: I wrote quite a number of songs, including eventually, while
Speaker 1: I took a few months off a couple of years
Speaker 1: later than didn't tour, so I could just write songs,
Speaker 1: and that was where I wrote Secret Gardens and a
Speaker 1: couple of others. But I always have something I come
Speaker 1: up with, something that I need to put on a record.
Speaker 1: So usually one of my songs will show up in
Speaker 1: a collection of other things, except of course, if I'm
Speaker 1: doing its on time album, yes, or an album of
Speaker 1: Lennon McCartney, which I've done, an album of Bob Dylan,
Speaker 1: which I've done. Of those three, the Sondheim, the Lennon
Speaker 1: McCartney and the Dylan. Doing so many of those songs
Speaker 1: which surprised you the most when you did it, or
Speaker 1: what had the most surprises for you when you actually
Speaker 1: sat down to arrange the songs and to sing them. Well,
Speaker 1: I knew the Dylan songs very well, and I knew
Speaker 1: the Beatles songs very well. But I also by the
Speaker 1: time I recorded the song Time, I knew exactly what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do, and I'd been working on it since.
Speaker 1: Probably did it in twenty sixteen, so it was fifteen
Speaker 1: years later. But I had really absorbed that group of
Speaker 1: songs that I loved and that I had to sing,
Speaker 1: and I had to sing them with an orchestra, and
Speaker 1: they were the most challenging. These are works which have
Speaker 1: great depths and great demands to make on the voice
Speaker 1: as well as on the heart. Jimmy Webb says to me,
Speaker 1: you know, you always record the most difficult of my songs.
Speaker 1: One of which I have struggled with, but I finally
Speaker 1: think I can sing it is his song about Gogan,
Speaker 1: which is one of those mountain climes of a song.
Speaker 1: But it prepared me actually learning Gogan and singing it
Speaker 1: in concerts and kind of absorbing it and then recording
Speaker 1: I think prepared me to do this on time album
Speaker 1: and it is really satisfying and really exciting material and
Speaker 1: really brings you up to the point where you have
Speaker 1: to say, wow, I don't know how I did that.
Speaker 1: What is it that's challenging about his songs? Is it
Speaker 1: the leaps? Is it the rhythm? Is there just something
Speaker 1: about singing them that makes them difficult? They're often some
Speaker 1: other realm that is not customary in songs from the
Speaker 1: Great American Songbook, most of which have been taken out
Speaker 1: of Broadway shows. You don't sing along with son TEI
Speaker 1: when you walk out of the theater. Pretty much you
Speaker 1: are given an architecture that is unusual, surprising, very moving,
Speaker 1: intellectually challenging, and at the same time melodic. He holds
Speaker 1: the papers he has signed off on, something that other
Speaker 1: people cannot really copy. I don't think. Do you think
Speaker 1: you have a talent from making them accessible to your audience?
Speaker 1: I hope so, and that's really the point. I do
Speaker 1: think that my ability to clarify and to articulate, to
Speaker 1: be clear, and to phrase, and that's what you have
Speaker 1: to do with those songs. You must phrase them so
Speaker 1: that they are understandable to the listener, and that you
Speaker 1: use that melody to carry you through to your audience
Speaker 1: so that they get it and that they are as
Speaker 1: excited about the song when it comes to an end
Speaker 1: is you are. I'm wondering if some of that for
Speaker 1: you comes from your early career. But it was very
Speaker 1: much traditional folk music, Irish appelation. Yes, that was really
Speaker 1: the stuff you learned and the stuff you first recorded. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but when you perform it it doesn't sound old timey
Speaker 1: or nostalgic. You make them feel very contemporary. Yes, A
Speaker 1: song of yours that I love and seems almost like
Speaker 1: a folk song at times. Is my father? Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about writing that? It was in April that
Speaker 1: I wrote of nineteen sixty eight, and he died in May.
Speaker 1: It was just an easy access. It came very easily.
Speaker 1: You know. They don't all come so easily, and that's
Speaker 1: how they get you, though. It took me about forty
Speaker 1: minutes to write, since you've asked, and the same thing
Speaker 1: was true as my father. But then in between you
Speaker 1: have these months and months of struggling with a song.
Speaker 1: But they hook you by getting you to be able
Speaker 1: to write my father, And since you've asked, I knew
Speaker 1: he was sick. In nineteen sixty seven, at Christmas, I
Speaker 1: had been for the first time. I'd been making some money,
Speaker 1: and so I gave my parents a trip to Hawaii
Speaker 1: is a present, and when they got there, he got sick,
Speaker 1: and he got sick there in the hospital, and then
Speaker 1: he came back, and for months they didn't know what
Speaker 1: was the matter with him. But I knew he was
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and so the song came very easily
Speaker 1: to me, But he never heard it, which is the
Speaker 1: sad part of it. I called an old friend, Tom Glazer,
Speaker 1: and I sang it to Tom on the phone. I
Speaker 1: would have done that was my father, I'm sure, but
Speaker 1: it's not something that probably a person who's on his
Speaker 1: way to dying would want to hear necessarily because the
Speaker 1: opening of the song it describes your father promising you
Speaker 1: that you would live in France. Yeah, is that something
Speaker 1: your father actually did? Well? It was in sixty eight.
Speaker 1: It was that summer I met Stephen four days after
Speaker 1: my father's death, and I was writing the song and
Speaker 1: the first line was my father always promised us that
Speaker 1: we would live in Spain. I couldn't rhyme it with
Speaker 1: rain or pain, so I had to change. My fair
Speaker 1: Lady killed that one for exactly. Yeah, we'll be right
Speaker 1: back after a quick break with more from Judy Collins.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Bruce Headlam and Judy Collins.
Speaker 1: Can you take me back to sixty four where you
Speaker 1: were and how the first town Hall concert came about?
Speaker 1: Because it became a famous album of yours. It did
Speaker 1: become a famous album, and I signed my contract with
Speaker 1: Elector in nineteen sixty one on a handshake with Jack Holsman,
Speaker 1: and he became my champion. And I had opened for
Speaker 1: theod Quell at Carnegie Hall. So I had sort of
Speaker 1: broken into the big stages in New York. But now
Speaker 1: I had a full tell solo concert at town Hall,
Speaker 1: and that was after my first three albums, and so
Speaker 1: Jack said, well, let's we got to record this. That
Speaker 1: was a big deal in those days because there was
Speaker 1: a big truck outside and a lot of people with
Speaker 1: a lot of reel to reel tapes going on. I'd
Speaker 1: found Phil Oakes's song in the Heat of the Summer,
Speaker 1: and a couple of Dylan songs, primarily the Lonesome Death
Speaker 1: of Hattie Carroll, which I had heard him sing actually
Speaker 1: on the town Hall stage in nineteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: Billy Head Wheeler song, one of which Cold Too I
Speaker 1: have sung consistently from then on. It's the best song
Speaker 1: about people who've been in a job that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: anymore that I know, So it was really interesting to
Speaker 1: go back and do that. We did this album in
Speaker 1: a virtual environment, so there was nobody in town Hall
Speaker 1: when we recorded it in January, and I didn't actually
Speaker 1: know they were going to put it on a vinyl
Speaker 1: and a CD, but they did, which is good. It's
Speaker 1: good for me. It's good for my fans. If it
Speaker 1: hadn't been for the pandemic, would you have had a
Speaker 1: crowd there or not? Oh yeah, oh yes, we should
Speaker 1: mention that was your album of twenty nineteen, which became
Speaker 1: your first number one album on the Billboard. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you were I think eighty when that happened. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I got a call from Billboard and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you've got your number one lifetime and you're in the
Speaker 1: bluegrass category. And I said, that's fine. I'm very happy
Speaker 1: to know. But remember I've had all those other numbers
Speaker 1: to the year. Don't forget about those. Your performances in
Speaker 1: that are I mean, it's beautiful, but particularly this on
Speaker 1: time because the album finishes with it, and so it
Speaker 1: finishes with the line maybe next year. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: knowing it was done in the middle of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it's very moving. Yeah, it is. When I was listening
Speaker 1: to the album and I'm listening to you sing both
Speaker 1: sides now, which is not the easiest song to sing
Speaker 1: in the world. You sing it in the same key.
Speaker 1: I know. I always sing it in the same key.
Speaker 1: A lot of the songs on that album. On the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four are very high and I could sing
Speaker 1: them no problem. Okay, Well, then we need to know
Speaker 1: your secret, because how can you sing songs like and
Speaker 1: Winter Sky and Ramblin Boy and all these other great songs?
Speaker 1: You sing in the same key which a lot of
Speaker 1: performers over the years have to lower it. So what
Speaker 1: do you do with your voice that allows you to
Speaker 1: do that? Well, today I sat down and practice the
Speaker 1: piano and sang did some exercises that I was taught
Speaker 1: by my teacher. And if there is a secret, it
Speaker 1: is what Max Margali's taught me, which is that everything
Speaker 1: is about clarity and phrasing. If you listen to a
Speaker 1: singer and you understand the words, it goes a long
Speaker 1: way to proving that they're singing well. If you don't,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much. And my whole purpose in life
Speaker 1: is to tell the stories so that they can be understood.
Speaker 1: I know some people who have let's say, rugged voices.
Speaker 1: They're charming, but the real challenge is to keep telling
Speaker 1: the stories and telling them understandably. You mentioned Max Margolis,
Speaker 1: he was there vocal coach. Yes, when did you start
Speaker 1: with him? I started with him in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: You know, as a pianist trained pianist, I sang in
Speaker 1: the choirs and the choruses. But when I got stretched
Speaker 1: out on the road after sixty one, when I began
Speaker 1: to make records and have to travel all over the world,
Speaker 1: I would lose my voice all the time. And so
Speaker 1: by nineteen sixty five it was clear that I had
Speaker 1: to do something about it. And I didn't know anybody
Speaker 1: in New York who would do that. I mean my
Speaker 1: friends who were the folk music community. Nobody was taking
Speaker 1: singing lessons, that's for sure. So I called Harry Belafonde
Speaker 1: and his somebody who worked with him, and said, oh,
Speaker 1: Harry says, you have to talk to his guitarist, Ray Boguslav,
Speaker 1: and you have to call Ray because Ray knows about
Speaker 1: these things. So I called Ray Boguslav and he said, well,
Speaker 1: there's only one person that would be worthwhile to work with,
Speaker 1: and his name is Max Margolis. So I wrote his
Speaker 1: phone number down. And so at the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: I was in my apartment on the Upper West Side,
Speaker 1: and I picked up the piece of paper with the
Speaker 1: phone number on it, which I had kept, and I
Speaker 1: called this number and this man answered, and I said,
Speaker 1: who I was, and I told him who had recommended him.
Speaker 1: And we talked for a little bit and I said,
Speaker 1: I'd really like to come and see you and see
Speaker 1: if you can help me out with this problem. And
Speaker 1: he said what do you do? And I told him
Speaker 1: and he said, ah, I'm not interested. You people are
Speaker 1: not serious. And I said, oh, trust me, I'm serious.
Speaker 1: And I begged and pleaded, and finally he said all right.
Speaker 1: He said we'll spend a little time together. You can
Speaker 1: come and see me. And I said, well, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: But where do you live? And he told me, and
Speaker 1: I walked out my front door on the eighth floor
Speaker 1: of one sixty four West seventy ninths and I turned
Speaker 1: right and walked past the elevator and rang his bell.
Speaker 1: He didn't expect you quite so soon. Now, that's how
Speaker 1: right on these two folks were. That I obviously it
Speaker 1: was Karmick, and it was met and then I studied
Speaker 1: with him for thirty two years until he died. And
Speaker 1: the last thing he said to me at Roosevelt Hospital
Speaker 1: when he was dying was don't worry. As long as
Speaker 1: you know that it's clarity and phrasing, you're going to
Speaker 1: be fine. How do you practice clarity and phrasing? Well,
Speaker 1: you think about clarity about the words. You know, my
Speaker 1: husband will say to me, you've got to be clearer
Speaker 1: on that song. You know it's a new song and
Speaker 1: you're not finding your way into it. It's not understandable
Speaker 1: to me. So that'll do it, you know every time.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Judy Collins. After
Speaker 1: a quick break, we're back with the rest of Bruce's
Speaker 1: conversation with Judy Collins. One of the things reading your
Speaker 1: autobiography that I found fascinating. You lived in the Upper
Speaker 1: West Side, but you were really part of the Greenwich
Speaker 1: village scene, and how quickly you got to know seemingly everybody.
Speaker 1: When you had trouble with your voice, you phoned Harry Bellefonte.
Speaker 1: What was it about the village at that point? I
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of talented people there, but
Speaker 1: everybody seemed to intersect so many times. Was it a
Speaker 1: small community, Was it that everybody was drinking together, or
Speaker 1: what was it that made it so connected? You know,
Speaker 1: when you think of the village, it's a very small
Speaker 1: area of physical area. It's only a few blocks. You
Speaker 1: would think of it as this huge place, and yes
Speaker 1: we drank together. It was very much a social club.
Speaker 1: But when I got to the village, it was nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, and there was a kind of a word
Speaker 1: of mouth around the whole country. The people around the
Speaker 1: clubs would say, to another person who ran a club
Speaker 1: in Chicago, maybe she sold tickets, and they would hire me.
Speaker 1: I was there for six weeks at a time, or
Speaker 1: sometimes a month and a half two months. In that way,
Speaker 1: the venues got to know that you were doing business,
Speaker 1: so they would hire you. And I went to New
Speaker 1: York for the first time since I was a teenager.
Speaker 1: I went to Greenwich Village and I was the opener.
Speaker 1: I was the headliner at Gurtis Folk City in April
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty one. Dylan had been when he was
Speaker 1: called roberts Eyman. He had been in Denver and he
Speaker 1: was hanging out there. He was homeless there. He was
Speaker 1: sleeping on the couches of people who sang at the Exodus,
Speaker 1: which is a club that I sang. I opened for
Speaker 1: Bob Gibson, who discovered Joan Bias, and then he called
Speaker 1: Jack Holsman and said, I think I've found your Joan Bias.
Speaker 1: It was a very tiny community, although we were stretched
Speaker 1: out very sin all over the country. But that's really
Speaker 1: the way it was. The night that I opened as
Speaker 1: the headliner at Gertie's Folks, that everybody was there that
Speaker 1: I had ever seen in the record stores, and Pete
Speaker 1: Seeger was there, and Peter Paulumer was there, and Dave
Speaker 1: ren Ronk was there. In Ramblin, Jack Elliott was there
Speaker 1: because my opener was a thirteen year old named Arlo Guthrie.
Speaker 1: So they had come to see what Woody's kid was
Speaker 1: going to do. And I've known Arlo for sixty years.
Speaker 1: I was fascinated that this sort of dominant, slightly fearsome
Speaker 1: character for you when you went there was Joan Bias.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Dylan. He was still a kid. Joan was the
Speaker 1: one that everybody kind of gravitated to, and she seemed
Speaker 1: to be the charismatic one. Oh and she became a
Speaker 1: friend very early on and her sister. I was embedded
Speaker 1: with this group of people, including people like Phil Oaks,
Speaker 1: who one day he knew that I was recording in
Speaker 1: the heat of the summer was a wonderful song by him,
Speaker 1: and so he knew I was going to be recording
Speaker 1: that month in sixty four, and so he brought Eric
Speaker 1: Anderson over. I didn't know Eric at all, So he
Speaker 1: brought him over, and Eric brushed me aside, raced to
Speaker 1: the bedroom, sat down, finished writing the words to the song,
Speaker 1: and then came back and sang me Thirsty Boots and
Speaker 1: I said, oh, that's great, I'll record that tomorrow too.
Speaker 1: So things like that were always happening. It just they
Speaker 1: seemed to happen so rapidly. That's right. Odetta's husband was
Speaker 1: my manager for a while. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know that. I didn't know that, but you guys played
Speaker 1: a very particular role which you don't find in pop
Speaker 1: music anymore. Before you started writing, you were almost like
Speaker 1: the curators of what was happening. You know. You sang
Speaker 1: Dylan songs before Dylan was popular, and he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had a career without John Byas and Odetta sang everybody's songs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you became this interpreter of these songwriters people hadn't really
Speaker 1: heard of. I want to just talk about a few
Speaker 1: of them because the list is so impressive. How did
Speaker 1: you first meet Ian and Sylvia? Well, they were recording
Speaker 1: for Electra, and they were charming. They had a place
Speaker 1: in the village, and you know, Electra was a family
Speaker 1: and Jack Holton and his wife Nina used to do
Speaker 1: these big parties when you had a concert somewhere and
Speaker 1: we'd meet everybody. Or I'd go to hear Ian and
Speaker 1: Sylvia sang somewhere at some club. Or I'd go hang
Speaker 1: out at the gaslight and listen to Dave van Rogue
Speaker 1: and there would be Phil Oaks singing and Peter Lafar.
Speaker 1: There was always something going on. I listened to the
Speaker 1: songs and I would pluck out the ones that I
Speaker 1: knew would work for me. And I went to see
Speaker 1: Dylan and it must have been sixty two. It was
Speaker 1: very early on. It was town Hall and he sang
Speaker 1: Masters of War and I just flipped out, and also
Speaker 1: fairthe Well, and I said, I have to record this guy.
Speaker 1: So then I came back to the East and moved
Speaker 1: straight into the village just where I knew I had
Speaker 1: to be, and I just had to be there in
Speaker 1: a way. Everybody found a way to get into that
Speaker 1: recording studio with Elector and make a record. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: didn't stay all that long. I did, But I did
Speaker 1: get to know people because of that, because that social
Speaker 1: life that kind of swirled around Nina and Jack Holsman.
Speaker 1: And how did you meet Leonard Cohen? You may be
Speaker 1: the only person not to have had an affair with
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen. Yes, I'm the only person who didn't. Yes,
Speaker 1: the only girl in the room left inning. I had
Speaker 1: a couple of friends. Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner were
Speaker 1: friends of mine in those old days in the village.
Speaker 1: And I had a friend named Linda Gottlieban. She and
Speaker 1: I and Mary Martin would have dinner, The four or
Speaker 1: five of us would have dinner. Mary Martin worked for
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers and she was a Canadian and we would
Speaker 1: go out to dinner and she would talk about her
Speaker 1: life in Canada, and she would talk about this guy
Speaker 1: named Leonard and she would say, Leonard's a wonderful poet,
Speaker 1: and we all love him. We all grew up in
Speaker 1: the same neighborhood. That's also where Nancy Bacall came into
Speaker 1: my life too, a little after that, and she said,
Speaker 1: we're also worried about him because he's a brilliant person.
Speaker 1: He gets some books published and we go to his
Speaker 1: little readings in Montreal. But we don't understand these poems
Speaker 1: that all, they're so obscure. So this went on for
Speaker 1: a couple of years, in and out of various spots
Speaker 1: where we'd have dinner or lunch or whatever. Then in
Speaker 1: sixty six she called me one day and she said, well,
Speaker 1: you will be surprised, but he's writing songs and he
Speaker 1: wants to come to see you to record his songs. Now,
Speaker 1: by that time, of course, I had had the hand
Speaker 1: in a number of careers, many many artists. I suppose
Speaker 1: it was known that if you could get me on
Speaker 1: a record on electro, because I was recording every year,
Speaker 1: it would be a good thing for your career. I
Speaker 1: said to Leonard, you know, Mary told me that you
Speaker 1: write songs, and I'd love to hear some, if that's
Speaker 1: okay with you. He said, okay, i'll come by the
Speaker 1: next day. So the next day he came by the
Speaker 1: apartment and he said, I can't sing and I can't
Speaker 1: play the guitar, and I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: a song. And he sang me three songs. He sang
Speaker 1: me the Stranger Song, which I've never recorded yet, but
Speaker 1: I will someday, and he sang me dress Rehearsal RAG,
Speaker 1: which is the story of a rehearsal for a suicide,
Speaker 1: which I thought was great, and then he sang me Suzanne.
Speaker 1: Now Michael got it right away with Susannie said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's it, and I said, I'm not so sure. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't until a day or two later that it
Speaker 1: sunk in. That was when I called Jack. We had
Speaker 1: been working on In My Life, which was my fifth album,
Speaker 1: fifth or sixth, and it was a huge departure from
Speaker 1: everything I'd ever done because now there were no guitars,
Speaker 1: there was no Dylan, there was no phil Oaks. It
Speaker 1: was songs from the Marsade, songs from the Pirate Jenny.
Speaker 1: It was a huge departure, and in my life a
Speaker 1: Beatles song. We should just back up. This was a
Speaker 1: famous theater production Peter Brooks and the story of the
Speaker 1: Marquis de Sade, a fantastic production, and the music was
Speaker 1: not distinctly song. So I took the whole soundtrack and
Speaker 1: I had them put it on a reel to reel
Speaker 1: for me, and then I edited it with my own
Speaker 1: razor to put the thing to together so that it it
Speaker 1: would make a complete kind of text as a song.
Speaker 1: And then we said, let's get Josh to do this.
Speaker 1: Let's get Josh Rudkin to orchestrate these things, Pirate Jenny,
Speaker 1: the music of the mar It Saw in My Life, etc.
Speaker 1: And so we'd done all this material. We went to
Speaker 1: England actually to record so we could get the folks
Speaker 1: who sang for the mar Itsad recordings. And we were
Speaker 1: out there, you know, we were having a very good time.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew what we were doing and nobody understood why
Speaker 1: we were doing what we were doing, and so we
Speaker 1: were very happy with it. But Jack said to me,
Speaker 1: it's missing something. And that was when Leonard came along.
Speaker 1: I called Jack a couple of days later and I said,
Speaker 1: I think I found them missing something. I had Leonard
Speaker 1: play Suzanne for him and he said, Ah, that's it,
Speaker 1: that we're done. It's amazing to me at that point
Speaker 1: that you'd had five or six records by that before
Speaker 1: you did In My Life, and they had done okay,
Speaker 1: but you didn't have a breakout hit on Eddie of them.
Speaker 1: You were touring a lot. A musician today would not
Speaker 1: get six kicks at the can with they didn't have
Speaker 1: Jack Holsman on their side. Do you think that was it? Oh? Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a believer, you know. He said to me
Speaker 1: when Bob Gibson had called him from Denver and said,
Speaker 1: I have found your Joan Baias. That was in fifty
Speaker 1: nine and Bob said, I think you have to come
Speaker 1: out here to Denver and hear her. And he did,
Speaker 1: but he didn't introduce himself to me. And two years
Speaker 1: later he came to see me at Gertie's Folk City
Speaker 1: and said, you're ready to make a record. And years
Speaker 1: later he said I didn't know that he had come
Speaker 1: out to Denver, And then he called after Sammis had Gertie's,
Speaker 1: he called Bob Gibson and said, I have now found
Speaker 1: my Judy Collins. And he told me this maybe five
Speaker 1: years ago. I heard the story from him. He saves
Speaker 1: these little nuggets for me, tells me decades later. I
Speaker 1: was saying, he hung onto that one for a long time.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I said, why didn't you introduce yourself?
Speaker 1: He said, because I heard you and I thought she's
Speaker 1: very good. But then he thought I did not know
Speaker 1: if you were serious, And I said, well, you could
Speaker 1: have asked me. I was always very serious and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, but you see, he had a heart,
Speaker 1: also has integrity, and he knows that it takes time
Speaker 1: to build an artist. I would do want to ask
Speaker 1: about two more songwriters you champion very early, Randy Newman,
Speaker 1: How did that song come to your time? Somebody sent
Speaker 1: me somebody from his camp sent me that song when
Speaker 1: I was on the verge of recording in My Life album.
Speaker 1: He had recorded it and I heard it and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm putting this on the album. That's what made the
Speaker 1: decision in his mind that he was going to be
Speaker 1: a songwriter and not go the route of most of
Speaker 1: his relatives who wrote music for movies. As you know.
Speaker 1: That was what did it. That I chose the song
Speaker 1: and I sang it, and of course it's a great
Speaker 1: and the song is great. Yeah, rain today. I think
Speaker 1: it's going to rain to the pin today. Just an
Speaker 1: amazing song. But I didn't know him. Somebody brought the
Speaker 1: song to my producer, to Mark Abramson, and kind of
Speaker 1: threw it on his desk. And how did you first hear?
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell. Another one of those miraculous moments. I was
Speaker 1: in the village I was hanging out recording, traveling, and
Speaker 1: I became friendly with al Cooper, who started blood, sweat
Speaker 1: and tears. Then sixty seven. I was passed out, I'm
Speaker 1: sure one night and it was about three in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I got this call from al Cooper and I said,
Speaker 1: why are you calling me? What is going on? Is
Speaker 1: something wrong? And he said, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: I followed this girl home and she was good looking,
Speaker 1: and she said she was a songwriter, and so I
Speaker 1: figured I couldn't lose, so I followed her home and
Speaker 1: when she got there, she started singing these songs and
Speaker 1: I said, to her, hold everything, I have to call Judy.
Speaker 1: So he called me and I said, why are you
Speaker 1: calling me in the middle of the night, And then
Speaker 1: he said, I have a surprise for you. She does
Speaker 1: write songs and you are going to love them. And
Speaker 1: then he put her on the phone and she sang
Speaker 1: me both sides Now she sang that on the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did she play guitar? When she was playing the guitar
Speaker 1: and singing into the phone with al Cooper sitting next
Speaker 1: to her, and you thought what I thought, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'll be right over and I took Jack with me
Speaker 1: the next day and I said, this is it, and
Speaker 1: he said, you're right, and that was it. I did
Speaker 1: Michael from Mountains to which I don't sing in concerts,
Speaker 1: but it is a great song. And then you later
Speaker 1: did a couple other big songs of hers. I did
Speaker 1: Chelsea Morning, Chelsea Morning. It was a hit for you,
Speaker 1: and then President Clinton and his wife said they named
Speaker 1: Chelsea Morning after listening to my version of the song.
Speaker 1: But that's a big song that I do. I love
Speaker 1: that that song a lot. Did you maintain a relationship
Speaker 1: with her over the year. Not really. You know, we've
Speaker 1: grown apart, and we also live in different parts of
Speaker 1: the country and she doesn't travel so much. I mean,
Speaker 1: she has had her physical issues, but we have had
Speaker 1: some very nice times. Clive Davis got together a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. She was still in a wheelchair, but
Speaker 1: she came to the Grammy party that he has before
Speaker 1: the Grammys and I sang both sides now with a
Speaker 1: wonderful band for her, and so that was very special. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy you could fit us in. Oh you
Speaker 1: maybe the busiest person I know. What a treat for me.
Speaker 1: I've loved every second of it. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming down. Thanks that Judy Collins for taking a
Speaker 1: roll down memory Lane with Bruce. You can check out
Speaker 1: a playlist of all of our favorite Judy Collins songs
Speaker 1: and songs inspired by Judy Collums at broken Record podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 1: at help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Bentaladay, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others
Speaker 1: from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is
Speaker 1: a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad
Speaker 1: free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us
Speaker 1: on your podcast app. For the music Spychannic Beats, I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond four