Judy Collins: Singing for the Privileged Few

Judy Collins has been touching my heart since my teens, when I discovered two albums she made in the early 1970s, just before she bid the waning folk movement goodbye. Living and True Stories (and Other Dreams) are deliciously sad collections of folk-art ballads; they cover subjects ranging from Che Guevara's execution to the lingering ghosts of childhood. The classically-trained singer gave those songs an artful formality, but even at fourteen I sensed an emotionally fragile woman. Only later did she speak of her raging battle with alcoholism, which my father shared. But her only revelations then were in song; the Judy I first saw on TV remained hidden inside floor-length, folk-hippie dresses and hardly talked. Her famous blue eyes -- big, mournful, and distant -- suggested the true story.

Decades later, with demons tamed, Judy (now 70) has risen above her former self in many ways. She and her wondrously intact soprano have lately been ensconced at the Cafe Carlyle, one of the most elitist, exclusionary nightspots in New York. There she sells out nightly at a music charge of $125-$175.

At her opening-night show on Sept. 29, Judy's nearly waist-length mane of hair was platinum and swirled, and she wore a sequined pants suit. Beaming, she told the audience of her kinship with Elaine Stritch and Barbara Cook, theatrical doyennes who play the Carlyle. She bubbled over with stories about her liberal Denver upbringing; her blind father Chuck, a singing radio host; the classical piano studies she traded for the call of folk and the social revolutions of the 1960s. Risqué-for-their-time witticisms by Dorothy Parker and Mae West took their place in her show alongside Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs; she even revived yesterday's news by saluting Susan Boyle with "I Dreamed a Dream."

It was a precarious balancing act, and such is her magic that she managed to pull it off, rivetingly. But the uptown Judy has been in the works for a long time. In 1975 she recorded Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," thus began her long struggle to shake off the folk label, which by the mid-1970s had become quaint. She ceased to play guitar onstage for years. Art songs by Ned Rorem and others by Sondheim appeared in her repertoire; so did "Junk Food Junkie," proof of how eager she was to show people she had a sense of humor.

Judy has since re-embraced her folk roots; now she performs mostly with her own guitar and with a talented pianist, Russell Walden. The enduring purity, agility, and silvery sheen of her voice elicit gasps. She sings the murderous tale of "Anathea," with its high-flying refrain, effortlessly in her original 1963 key. My favorite moments of hers happen when she sits at the piano and lets loose her billowing, Debussy-esque waves of chords. In autobiographical originals like "My Father" and "Secret Gardens," her picturesque imagery floods the mind.

But her current setting seems incongruous for a woman who started out as the most populist sort of entertainer: a Woody Guthrie-inspired troubadour who sang for and about the people. I looked around the Café and saw older women in Chanel suits, with pearls as big as marbles. They sat with gray-suited, Rolex-wearing men, bald, bespectacled, and looking like retired bankers, as some of them surely are. The couples stared at Judy with wistful eyes. With only the gentlest prompting from her, they eagerly sang along with songs of youthful idealism, from "Over the Rainbow" to "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

For this crowd, the flowers haven't gone. They're purchased at the Carlyle florist in $200 bouquets, or planted by landscapers at those customers' Hamptons homes. But as I watched the transfixed faces of Judy's Carlyle fans, I had to wonder: What long and winding road took them here? Did any of them ever roll around in the mud at Woodstock? Burn their draft cards? Attend a Vietnam War peace rally, take LSD?

I phoned my friend Barry Dennen, a gifted actor-singer, to ask his opinion. Barry knows a thing or two about extraordinary women who change in unexpected ways. His 1997 book, My Life with Barbra, astutely recalls the time in which he lived with and mentored the pre-superstar Streisand. She, of course, is back in the news, having released a new "jazz" album of standards and done a launch show at the Village Vanguard, the kind of club for which Dennen groomed her. But clips of that event, posted on AOL, again confirm that Streisand has lost all touch with the brash, hungry, emotionally spontaneous girl she once was. Now careful and queenly, she seems afraid to revisit her past self, even if she might wish she could.

Happily, Judy Collins doesn't share that fear. But I asked Barry if he thought her Carlyle fans had ever indulged in any true 1960s hellraising.

Not much, he said, if any: "They were Democrats who made their first money and became Republicans." Through Judy, he believes, "they're trying to recapture their youth and their lost dreams." In this pampered setting the Carlyle swells can do so without dirtying their hands, swept back in time by a woman whose ageless voice makes them feel young again.

Finally Judy floats off stage, accepting one of those Carlyle bouquets from a staff member as her fans cheer. Waving, she vanishes quickly through the back door. Checks are left on tables, and out come the American Express platinum cards. I spotted the bill for a table of four: just over $2,000. The recipient didn't flinch. For what Judy had just given him, no price was too high.

 

 

Comments

[JDM73]

So it goes. '60s folk singers did have to adapt if they wanted their careers to survive--Dylan became a rock and roller, and I still think "What the--?" when I look at those photos of him wearing eyeliner and weird, billowy, pseudo-Elvis get-ups in the '70s (see "Hard Rain" [front cover] and "Street Legal" [back]). The only one who never really made the transition was Phil Ochs, God love him. His songs were always first-rate, though.

[SethBLiNK]

Is it a crime to be rich?

[MAH999]

Depends on how you got there and what it cost.

[SethBLiNK]

And the doorman at a club is supposed to check that along with ID?

[RobinSeattle]

You priced Eagles tickets lately? How about in excess of $150 to see them in a STADIUM? Same with the Stones and just about every other name act you can think of.

So that Collins plays in clubs for $175 a night isn't a surprise. It is just supply and demand. Besides, Collins hasn't had a hit record in decades and probably needs the money. Btw, her best album is "Wildflowers." She hasn't come close to matching it.

As for her leftwing bona fides, she isn't Joan Baez and never has been. Yeah, she did some fashionable cameo appearances for the Chicago Seven and had some buddies in the Yippies, but that is pretty thin gruel compared to what Baez, Seeger, Holly Near, John Lennon, and Phil Ochs did. Collins, for me, has always been an establishment figure, though not like someone like Loretta Lynn is (Lynn is a staunch Republican).

[RobinLandseadel]

I've looked at like from both sides now,
from rich and poor and still somehow I think I'd rather be rich and sit with all the swells at the Carlyle and all that goes with it.

'Cause seriously, who wouldn't?

[kwlrpcv]

Does this mean I'm not allowed to dip into my special-occasion entertainment fund, put on some nice clothes, and see the magnificent Judy Collins in one of the premier clubs in New York, just because you think the entire audience is "the priveleged few"? How do you know others in the audience aren't middle-class shlubs like me, out for a big night? And so what if they have amassed a few bucks by the time they reach their 60s? Do you really expect an entire generation to be acting out still, with their affected poverty and scruffy clothes? It appears both you and Dennen have a romanticized notion of the 60s and want to freeze all of us who lived them in our post-adolescent images. With due respect to Mr. Dennen, his assertion that "they were Democrats who made their first money and became Republicans" is absurd on its face and he should know better, since he is from the same cohort. On what does he base this declaration? Is his former mentee Streisand rich? Did she "become a Republican"?

Please allow us Boomers to grow up and pre-Boomer cultural icons like Collins to be free of the images they cultivated back in the day. The purity of her message remains the same, and just because she's sharing it at the Carlyle at the moment doesn't mean she can't go back into the trenches if she's needed there. Let her, and us, be.

[James Gavin]

Thanks, everyone, for reading and for your impassioned comments on my HP debut -- especially you, kwlrpcv, for your eloquent thoughts on moving forward, or just moving. Judy IS magnificent, and she IS there in the trenches when needed. And most people do grow up and change, often dramatically. I'm sorry that so many people I know who love her could never afford the ever-escalating price of seeing her in that room, especially in a recession. If you can afford it under any circumstances (I didn't mention the cost of dinner and drinks), you are indeed among the privileged few. RobinSeattle, your point about the overall sky-high prices of arena concerts is well taken. But I disagree strongly with your statement about Judy and "Wildflowers." "True Stories (and Other Dreams)" came after, and that's a beauty. "Judy Sings Dylan" (1993) is gorgeously produced and stands among her very best. Some of Judy's greatest original songs -- "Singing Lessons," "Wings of Angels" -- were inspired by her son's tragic suicide in 1992. Her performance at the Carlyle equaled or even exceeded her best early work, I thought. No, Judy wasn't the in-your-face political activist in those days that Joan and certain others were, but her dedication to all kinds of causes still puts her in the upper bracket of the socially conscious.

[lanrameau]

This blog made me think of Phil Och's "Love me, I'm a Liberal". Maybe even Phil would be singing for hedge fund managers these days.

To give some hope, there's this great story about the real thing: http://www.joanbaez.com/joansanddirkscorner.html . I saw her in Utah a month before. No $2000 checks, maybe some bankers and definitely a truck driver in the front row, it was the best concert I've been to. Great music, the band adored her and she was gorgeous.