Judy Collins was there at the weekend party where Bob Dylan wrote “Mr. Tambourine Man” and she introduced Leonard Cohen to the world when she recorded his “Suzanne.” She was known, in her pre-sobriety days, to toss back a few with Janis Joplin, took Joni Mitchell to her first Newport Folk Festival, was the inspiration for Stephen Stills’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and, along the way, performed with Kris Kristofferson and the Boys Choir of Harlem, Arlo Guthrie, the Sesame Street crowd, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash . . .
Not to mention her 55 albums, eight books and seven Grammy nominations — the first in 1964 and the most recent in 2023 — including one win.
Little wonder that Judy Collins is serious folk music royalty. Her iconic songs, including “A Maid of Constant Sorrow,” “Both Sides Now,” “Send in the Clowns,” and “Someday Soon,” are the soundtrack of a generation. And as she continues to tour and record at the age of 84, she is inspiring yet another.
After a sold-out performance at The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center in 2022, she returns to sing her way through her musical time machine and to share her memories of Greenwich Village back in the days when she and the other penniless denizens of Gerde’s Folk City and the Gaslight jammed on Sundays in Washington Square Park; when Bob was emerging from Zimmerman to Dylan; and when she was awoken at 3 AM from a dead sleep by a call from a friend insisting she listen to Joni Mitchell sing “Both Sides Now.”