Issue #161 – Judy Collins

Wildflowers would be Judy Collins most ambitious work yet, dialling back the more strident theatrical element of In My Life, but taking Judy’s love of Brel a step further by singing ‘La chanson des vieux amants’ (‘The Song Of Old Lovers’) in French. She also tackled Francesco Landini’s 14th Century lament ‘A Ballata of Francesco Landini – Lasso! di donna’ in Italian.

Cohen still didn’t have a record out yet, and Judy pre-empted him again, cutting spellbinding versions of ‘Sisters Of Mercy’ and ‘Priests’ (which Leonard never released himself), and duetted with herself on ‘Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’. ‘Since You Asked’ was joined by two equally gorgeous new tunes from Judy’s pen, the bereft ‘Sky Fell’ (in which she asked, “What will I do with the sky / When it is empty? / What will I do with my life / When you have left me?”), and the almost five-minute ‘Albatross’, which edged towards Cohen’s oblique imagery.

There was another new discovery from Canada in the mix. Earlier in the year, Judy had woken from a heavy night to a wee hours phone call from an animated Al Kooper, who’d been lodging with Judy. Kooper, in the middle of bailing from The Blues Project had gone back to The Lower East Side apartment of a young singer-songwriter after a show, perhaps not with entirely honourable intentions. Blown away by her songs, Kooper put Joni Mitchell on the line.

Accounts of this night vary quite a bit. According to Judy it was in the spring and, depending on the telling, she either headed straight over to meet Joni, or met her the next day with Jac Holzman in tow. According to Kooper’s memoirs, it was July, and “Judy was pretty pissed off” at being woken up as she was leaving for The Newport Folk Festival in the morning. He talked a grudging Judy, who was on Newport’s board, into putting Joni on the bill without hearing her sing.

Whatever really happened, Judy put Joni on alongside Cohen at Newport, and her two discoveries had a fling. Collins recorded ‘Michael From Mountains’ for Wildflowers, but everyone was excited about ‘Both Sides Now’ – cut at Columbia Studios in September, which Rifkin arranged as chiming chamber-pop, providing a distinctive harpsichord lick.

Judy continued recording Joni’s songs, and felt the pair were friends, but things soured after Mitchell started releasing her own albums. “Joni has nothing nice to say about anyone,” Collins told Liz Thomson for Tortoise in 2019. “I’m never on her invitation list. I made her a star, yet ‘Both Sides Now’ makes her mad as hell.”

Wildflowers was a Top 10 album, and well-received by most, but Melody Maker’s Karl Dallas, still rattled at her “folk traitor” status, penned a passive-aggressive piece in January ’68, blaming Judy’s orchestrations for kickstarting a new wave of folkies-with-strings, which, despite left-handed compliments he appeared particularly annoyed by. “I’m holding you primarily responsible, Judy Collins. You and your brilliant young arranger Josh Rifkin produced such a lovely album when you combined things like songs from the Marat/Sade play and a Paul McCartney (sic) number with clever and sensitive arrangements, that now everyone’s doing it.”

Others were politely appalled when Judy started doing shows with an electric backing band in ’68. The noise made by keyboardist Michael Sahl, bassist Chris Ethridge and drummer Maury Baker was modest compared to the electric mayhem of Dylan and The Hawks in ’66, but folk purists weren’t impressed. “She was hindered by the over-powering organ, drums and bass guitar of the back-up group – in itself a disturbing departure from her normal performances with unelectrified guitar and voice,” sniffed Village Voice’s Stephen MH Braitman, reviewing a show at Doug Weston’s Troubadour that June.

That trad folk versus modernity argument would come up again and again over the years. “What traditional music does for us is to remind us again of the fact again that we’re human beings and that we’re beset by so many problems, and also so many shared joys, and I think that’s what a great deal of contemporary music reminds us of — such as that of Joni Mitchell, or Leonard Cohen, or Sandy Denny, who is a terrific writer, or The Incredible String Band, who I love,” Judy argued to NME in October 1971.

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