Weekend Economists Ring in the Old, Wring Out the New: Dec. 30, 2011 to Jan. 2, 2012

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21. JUDY COLLINS: Offstage (Wiki)

Last edited Sat Dec 31, 2011, 03:56 AM - Edit history (1)

In more recent years Collins has taken to writing, producing a memoir, Trust Your Heart, in 1987, and a novel, Shameless. A more recent memoir, Sanity and Grace, tells of her son Clark's death in January 1992. Though her record sales are not what they once were, she still records and tours in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. She performed at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993, singing "Amazing Grace" and "Chelsea Morning." (The Clintons have stated that they named their daughter, Chelsea, after Collins' recording of the song.) In 2006, she sang "This Little Light of Mine" in a commercial for Eliot Spitzer.

In 2008 she oversaw an album featuring artists ranging from Dolly Parton and Joan Baez to Rufus Wainwright and Chrissie Hynde covering her compositions; she also released a collection of The Beatles covers, and she received an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute on May 18 of that year. In 2010, Collins sang The Weight of the World at the Newport Folk Festival, a song by Amy Speace.

Collins joined the 10th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers. She was also a judge for the 7th and 9th Independent Music Awards.


Activism

Like many other folk singers of her generation, Collins was drawn to social activism. Her political idealism also led her to compose a ballad entitled "Che" in honor of the 1960s icon Che Guevara.

Collins sympathized with the Yippie movement, and was friendly with its leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. On March 17, 1968, she attended Hoffman's press conference at the Americana Hotel in New York to announce the party's formation. In 1969, she testified in Chicago in support of the Chicago Seven; during her testimony, she began singing Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," and was admonished by prosecutor Tom Foran and judge Julius Hoffman.

She is currently a representative for UNICEF and campaigns on behalf of the abolition of landmines. In 1992, Collins' son, Clark Taylor, committed suicide at age 33, after a long bout with depression and substance abuse; since his death, she has also become a strong advocate of suicide prevention.

Personal life

Collins has been married twice. Her first marriage in 1958 to Peter Taylor produced her only child, Clark C. Taylor. The marriage ended in divorce in 1965.

In 1962, shortly after her debut at Carnegie Hall, Collins was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent six months recuperating in a sanitarium.

Collins later admitted suffering from bulimia after she had quit smoking in the 1970s. "I went straight from the cigarettes into an eating disorder," she told People magazine in 1992. "I started throwing up. I didn't know anything about bulimia, certainly not that it is an addiction or that it would get worse. My feelings about myself, even though I had been able to give up smoking and lose 20 lbs., were of increasing despair." She also talks at length, in Singing Lessons (pp. 172–190, 238–240) about her years of addiction to alcohol, the damage it did to her personal and musical life, and how it contributed to her feelings of depression. She says that, although she tried other drugs in the 1960s, alcohol was always her primary drug of choice, just as it had been for her father. She entered a rehabilitation program in Pennsylvania in 1978, and she has maintained her sobriety ever since, even through such traumatic events as the suicide of her only child, Clark, after his final relapse (previous section).

In April 1996, she married designer and fellow activist Louis Nelson. They live together in New York City.