[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 65 (Thursday, April 30, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Page S4955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO JUDY COLLINS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Marcelle and I have been privileged to have 
known Judy Collins for years. We have heard her sing in New York, in 
Washington, DC, and in Vermont, and every time we have been thrilled. I 
have even been known to call her phone just to hear her sing on her 
answering machine.
  The New York Times on April 23 of this year wrote a review of her 
current engagement at the Cafe Carlyle, and I talked with Judy about 
it. I know that she and Louis keep a very busy schedule, but I just 
wanted to congratulate her on another well deserved review.
  I would ask unanimous consent to have the New York Times article 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 23, 2009]

             Folk Goddess Descends From Her Lofty Pedestal

                          (By Stephen Holden)

       It wasn't always so. But nowadays a Judy Collins concert is 
     a seamless flow of music and storytelling. Alternating 
     between the guitar and the piano, Ms. Collins offers a 
     version of a personal musical history that is too complicated 
     and rich to be covered in a single evening.
       On Tuesday night at the Cafe Carlyle, where she began a 
     six-week engagement, the emphasis was on her folk-music side, 
     and for more than half the show she accompanied herself on 
     acoustic guitar, with Russell Walden assisting on piano and 
     backup vocals.
       Her song ``Mountain Girl,'' performed early in the evening, 
     set the tone. Ms. Collins grew up in Colorado, and her 
     silvery vibrato-free voice might be described as an Alpine 
     instrument. Especially when she sings a cappella, it has the 
     ringing purity of a voice emanating from a lofty altitude and 
     reverberating in an endless echo chamber of mountain passes. 
     Ms. Collins, who will turn 70 on May 1, has miraculously 
     retained her upper register. The higher she sings, most of 
     the time with perfect intonation, the more she projects the 
     ethereality of a flute played by the wind.
       The influence that propelled her from a piano prodigy who 
     played Mozart, she recalled, wasn't the sound of the Weavers 
     or Woody Guthrie, but that of Jo Stafford on her 1950s folk 
     albums. In particular it was Ms. Stafford's recording of 
     ``Barbara Allen,'' first heard on the radio, that drew Ms. 
     Collins away from classical piano. And as she sang this 
     ballad of unrequited love, death and grief, her vocal 
     similarities with Stafford, who died last year, were 
     striking. Both singers expressed a demure self-containment in 
     unadorned phrases that imbued their performances with faraway 
     longing.
       In recent years Ms. Collins has descended from the folk-
     goddess pedestal to emerge as a funny, self-effacing Irish-
     American storyteller, and the tension between her pristine 
     singing voice and her salty reminiscences lends her shows a 
     theatrical dimension. She reminisced at length about her 
     first meeting with Leonard Cohen, who had no confidence in 
     his talents until she recorded his song ``Suzanne.'' He 
     returned the favor by persuading her to take up songwriting.
       Her wildest tale described an adventure in Chicago on a 
     winter night in which she caroused until 3 a.m. with two 
     folk-singing colleagues, one of whom gave her a handgun for 
     protection during the walk back to her hotel. Once safely in 
     her room, she tried to remove the clip, and the gun went off.
       Those were the wild old days to which Ms. Collins 
     increasingly alludes in her shows. The more she talks about 
     her itinerant life as a folk musician, the more you want to 
     know. The high point of the show was her rendition of a 
     recent Jimmy Webb song, ``Paul Gauguin in the South Seas.'' 
     The song, which describes the painter's retreat from 
     civilization in a search for paradise that eventually landed 
     him in the Marquesas Islands, evokes the quest of any artist 
     for sacred ground that has never been visited: an elusive 
     place Ms. Collins conjures when her voice soars.

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