The Washington Post - For Judy Collins, Soothing Souls Is Job of a Lifetime

The Washington Post
Tim Page: Washington Post Staff Writer
September 28, 2001; Page C8

At 62, the 'Maid of Constant Sorrow' Is Constantly in Motion

NEW YORK -- "Art is the best therapy," Judy Collins reflected last week as she sipped a Diet Coke seven floor above a grieving city. "We forget to emphasize this in our schools. But then there is a trauma and out come the crayons, out come the paints, out come the pieces of paper, because the children need to express themselves. Art gives sustenance -- to everybody, not just children. People have told me that my music has helped them heal. And I'm glad about that, because music heals me as well."

At 62, Judy Collins maintains a classic beauty that is quite impervious to time and place. She might have stepped out of a Florentine portrait from the Renaissance, a New England daguerreotype or, for that matter, a contemporary fashion magazine. Her hair is gold and gray now, but the famous blue eyes sparkle with intelligence and temperament.

And it would seem a particularly good time to be Judy Collins. She has founded her own record company, called Wildflower, and has issued both a concert disc, "Live at Wolf Trap," and a single CD that encompasses her first two albums, "Maid of Constant Sorrow" and "Golden Apples of the Sun," recorded for Elektra almost 40 years ago. Meanwhile, Rhino Records has brought out a Judy Collins retrospective, with several of her greatest hits Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now," Stephen Sondheim's "Send In the Clowns" and the hymn "Amazing Grace" among them. And tonight at 7, she will be honored with a lifetime achievement award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts at its annual fall benefit concert.

Collins had a distinctly unusual upbringing. She grew up in Seattle, the daughter of Chuck Collins, a singer and radio composer who had been blind since childhood. The late Antonia Brico, one of the first women to make a career as a symphonic conductor, was an early mentor (Collins would repay the debt by producing the 1974 documentary "Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman"). By the age of 13, she had made her professional debut as a pianist, playing a Mozart concerto. "I credit my classical training with teaching me discipline -- how to practice and prepare -- and I doubt I would still be working if I didn't have that base," she said.

But Collins found herself drawn increasingly toward folk music, and by the time she was 16 she had begun playing guitar and singing in the clubs of Denver and Boulder, gradually migrating east to New York, where she appeared at the Village Gate. It was there that she was heard -- and was immediately signed to a record contract -- by Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra. Her first disc, a collection of folk standards, was recorded in only five hours.

"I don't think we made one edit," Collins recalled. "We just went in and played the material straight through. Looking back over 40 years, I think I had very good taste. There is not a single song on that record that I wouldn't feel comfortable singing today."

"But my voice! It's unschooled, unsophisticated -- I just didn't know how to sing! I sound more like a baritone than a soprano!" She laughed. "Well anyway, neither disc has been on CD before and this reissue will give audiences an idea of where I began."

Collins is too hard on herself. Her singing on these first recordings is indeed more rough-hewn than on her later discs. Yet the talent is apparent and there is an intensity to the interpretations that is in some ways more winning than the seraphic mellowness that characterizes many of her later recordings.

"I can't sing a nasty line," Collins said, almost apologetically. "There are some wonderful, mean songs that I sometimes think I'd love to sing -- maybe Sondheim's 'There's Something About a War' -- but I just can't do them. It's just not my character."

Although she has been involved in many political crusades -- from civil rights and protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s through her current championship of UNICEF and Amnesty International -- Collins does not consider herself "primarily" a political artist. "I just want to do as much as I can for the good of the world," she said. "One of the reasons I sang 'Amazing Grace' all those years ago was because I thought people needed to hear it."

Collins's roseate utopianism has been sorely tested. She suffered from alcoholism and depression for many years, and in 1992 her son Clark committed suicide. Yet she has managed to keep a fairly positive outlook. She has recently completed her third book, titled "Singing Lessons," which she calls "a memoir of love, loss, hope and healing" about the death of her son.

The recent attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have left her "terrified, petrified," she said. "I'm not thinking at all well. All I want to do is sing, hug my friends and family, call my mother and brother every few hours. I believe in love. And prayers. And in getting on with your life -- doing your work, whatever happens."

Last summer Collins launched a tour that she calls her "Wildflower Festival," presenting a series of concerts with her old friends and colleagues Roger McGuinn, Richie Havens and Janis Ian. "It was great fun," she said. "We've known each other forever and I think we were able to bring back some of the spirit of the times we lived through." She remains in touch with Leonard Cohen -- "Talk about a man of mystery!" she said, shaking her head with a fond grin and recently sang at the funeral of the folk singer Mimi Farina. Next summer she hopes to include folk singer and songwriter Tom Paxton, whom she called a "brilliant, funny, grown-up guy," in the Wildflower Festival. In addition to her early championship of Cohen, Collins was among the first to record songs by Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb and Joni Mitchell. "Now I'm learning a song called 'Drops of Jupiter,' by a group called Train, out of Atlanta," she said. "It's marvelous. I really admire a songwriter named Beth Nielsen Chapman. And I've thought of doing a classical album -- maybe the "Songs of the Auvergne," referring to Joseph Canteloube's haunting settings of folk songs from a province in France.

Collins named the late Teresa Sterne, who built Nonesuch Records into an enormously innovative label, as one of her heroes. "Tracey was the only woman who ran her own record company, and she had a terrible time of it," Collins remembered. "She was so smart, so detailed, such a perfectionist, but it was a man's world and she was treated horribly. Still, she made all those great records -- records that will last. She's a great role model for me -- a pioneer. I hope that her example will allow me to float my new label into longevity."

Four decades after "A Maid of Constant Sorrow," Judy Collins has grown into a woman of near-constant activity, full of energy and enthusiasm. Retirement, it would seem, is not an option. "It's very simple," she said in parting. "I plan to be performing as long as the possibility is there." And, outside on the street, as if by cue, a Peruvian flutist piped "Amazing Grace" to the dwindling autumn afternoon.

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