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In some ways, the career of folk empress Judy Collins has come full circle.
Take her performance residency last spring. For six weeks, she performed at the Cafe Carlyle in New York. The venue was vastly more upscale than the Greenwich Village clubs where Collins performed during the formative years of her extensive career, but its sense of immediacy and intimacy was a welcome throwback.
“Oh, the Carlyle is very intimate,” said Collins, who turned 70 during the cafe engagement. “It only seats about 100. So it is a very similar experience to old New York folk clubs like The Bitter End. That kind of intimacy, really, was what built the folk movement in the first place. The only thing different now is the way people are dressed.”
Well, that and the cover charge.
Since her recording career began in 1961, Collins has become of one folk music’s most familiar, welcoming and distinctive voices. Her singing — high, clear and jubilantly expressive — has aged remarkably little over the years.
For proof, compare two performance clips readily available on YouTube. Both feature Collins singing the wistful Ian Tyson renegade love song “Someday Soon.” One comes from an appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman” in July. The other originates from “The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour” 40 years earlier. Her voice today might reveal more sagelike contentment, but the art of singing for Collins, in approach and execution, remains as resolute as ever.
In a New York Times review of Collins’ opening-night performance at the Carlyle, Stephen Holden wrote, “The higher she sings, most of the time with perfect intonation, the more she projects the ethereality of a flute by the wind.”
Collins’ effect on today’s folk and pop generation is equally commanding. A 2008 tribute album, “Born to the Breed,” featured 14 Collins songs interpreted by Chrissie Hynde, Rufus Wainwright, Dolly Parton, Dar Williams and others. The record is an unexpected celebration, in a way, as Collins is viewed by many fans as primarily an interpretive singer.
Such a paradox is explored at the end of “Born to the Breed,” when veteran folk troubadour Leonard Cohen offers one of the album’s two versions of “Since You’ve Asked” (Joan Baez sings the other). Again, a career comes full circle: One of Collins’ most beloved interpretations remains her 1966 version of Cohen’s poetic and plaintive “Suzanne.” She also has dedicated an entire album to Cohen’s music: 2004’s “Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy.”
“I was the first person to put Leonard Cohen on a stage, in 1966,” Collins said. “He had read his poetry in tiny little places in Montreal and Toronto. But he had never really been onstage to perform. So when I was doing a benefit show in New York, I told him, ‘Come on up.’ It was a big concert. I think Jimi Hendrix was on the bill as well.
“So Leonard came to the show and got out onstage. He started to sing ‘Suzanne’ and then stopped right in the middle and walked off. I always thought it was because he was terrified. He said later it was because he broke a guitar string, but I don’t believe that for a minute. He, of course, went on to become a phenomenally good performer. I always thought he was wonderful.”
Curiously enough, it was Cohen who prodded Collins into putting aside other artists’ work and focusing on her own compositions.
“After I started recording Leonard’s music, he said, ‘How come you’re not writing any of your own songs?’ All I could say was, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s when I started writing, and ‘Since You’ve Asked’ became the first song I ever wrote. So to have him sing it on the tribute album was thrilling.”
Collins celebrated the release of “Born to the Breed” with a performance at another grand New York venue, the Public Theater. The concert brought together several artists who have followed her folk path, including Shawn Colvin and Mary Gauthier, along with a sterling songwriting contemporary, Jimmy Webb. The concert was a benefit for the famed New York music venue Joe’s Pub and a celebration of the 10th anniversary of Collins’ Wildflower record label. It also was a testament to a love of performing that, much like her singing voice, remains ageless.
“Performing is very much what I love,” Collins said. “It’s the way I make a living. It’s how I find a way to get through to an audience. And it’s all wonderful.”
