Judy Collins Popular Books

Judy Collins Biography & Facts

Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk music, country, show tunes, pop music, rock and roll and standards), for her social activism, and for the clarity of her voice. Her discography consists of 36 studio albums, nine live albums, numerous compilation albums, four holiday albums, and 21 singles. Collins' debut studio album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, was released in 1961 and consisted of traditional folk songs. She had her first charting single with "Hard Lovin' Loser" (No. 97) from her fifth studio album In My Life (1966), but it was the lead single from her sixth studio album Wildflowers (1967), "Both Sides, Now" – written by Joni Mitchell – that gave her international prominence. The single reached No. 8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and won Collins her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance. She enjoyed further success with her recordings of "Someday Soon", "Chelsea Morning" (also written by Mitchell), "Amazing Grace", "Turn! Turn! Turn!", and "Cook with Honey". Collins experienced the biggest success of her career with her recording of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns" from her tenth studio album Judith (1975). The single peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1975 and then again in 1977 at No. 19, spending 27 non-consecutive weeks on the chart and earning her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, as well as a Grammy Award for Sondheim for Song of the Year. Judith would also become her best-selling studio album; it was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1975 for sales of over 500,000 copies and Platinum in 1996 for sales of over 1,000,000 copies. In 2017, Collins's rendition of the song "Amazing Grace" was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant". That same year, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Folk Album for Silver Skies Blue with Ari Hest. 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 Norwegian singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jonas Fjeld featuring Chatham County Line. In 2022, she released her first studio album of all original material, titled Spellbound, and it earned her another Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Early life Collins was born the eldest of five siblings in Seattle, Washington, where she spent the first ten years of her life. Her father (a blind singer, pianist, and radio show host) took a job in Denver, Colorado in 1949 and the family moved there. Her grandfather was Irish. Collins contracted polio at the age of 11 and spent two months in isolation in a hospital. Career Beginnings Collins studied classical piano with Antonia Brico, making her public debut at age 13 performing Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos. Brico took a dim view of her developing interest in folk music, which led her to the difficult decision to discontinue her piano lessons. Years later, after she became known internationally, she invited Brico to one of her concerts in Denver. When they met after the performance, Brico took both of Collins' hands into hers, looked wistfully at her fingers and said, "Little Judy—you really could have gone places." Still later, she discovered that Brico herself had made a living when she was younger playing jazz and ragtime piano (Singing Lessons, pp. 71–72). In her early life, she met many professional musicians through her father. It was the music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and the traditional songs of the folk revival of the early 1960s, however, that kindled Collins' interest and awoke in her a love of lyrics. Three years after her debut as a piano prodigy, she was playing guitar. Her first public appearances as a folk artist after her graduation from Denver's East High School were at Michael's Pub in Boulder, Colorado and the folk club Exodus in Denver. Her music became popular at the University of Connecticut, where her husband taught. She performed at parties and for the campus radio station along with David Grisman and Tom Azarian. 1960s Collins eventually made her way to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she played in clubs like Gerde's Folk City until she signed with Elektra Records, a label she was associated with for 35 years. In 1961, she released her debut studio album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at age 22. At first, Collins sang traditional folk songs or songs written by others – in particular the protest songwriters of the time, such as Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She recorded her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!". She was also instrumental in bringing little-known musicians to a wider public. For example, she recorded songs by Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who became a close friend over the years. She also recorded songs by singer-songwriters such as Eric Andersen, Fred Neil, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Robin Williamson, and Richard Fariña long before they gained national acclaim. Collins' first few studio albums consisted of straightforward guitar-based folk songs, but with her fifth studio album In My Life (1966), she began branching out to include works from such diverse sources as the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, and Kurt Weill. Mark Abramson produced and Joshua Rifkin arranged the album, adding lush orchestration to many of the numbers. The album was a major departure for a folk artist and set the course for Collins' subsequent work over the next decade. With her sixth studio album Wildflowers (1967), also produced by Abramson and arranged by Rifkin, Collins began to record her own compositions, beginning with "Since You Asked". The album also provided her with a major hit and a Grammy Award in Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now", which in December 1968 reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, later (February 1970) reaching No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart. Collins' seventh studio album Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1968) was produced by David Anderle, and featured back-up guitar by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash), with whom she was romantically involved at the time. (She was the inspiration for Stills's CSN classic "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes".) Time Goes had a mellow country sound and included Ian Tyson's "Someday Soon" and the title track, written by the UK singer-songwriter Sandy Denny. The album also featured Collins' composition "My Father" and one of the first covers of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire". Two of Collins' songs ("Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" composed by Sandy Denny and "Albatross") were featured in the 1968 film The S.... Discover the Judy Collins popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Judy Collins books.