SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES

Reviewed 6/29/2012

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, by Judy Collins

Access to this book courtesy of the
San Jose, CA Public Library
SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES
My Life in Music
Judy Collins
New York: Crown Archetype, October 2011

Rating:

5.0

High

ISBN-13 978-0-307-71734-4
ISBN 0-307-71734-8 354pp. HC/BWI $26.00

Some notes on the contents of Judy Collins's third memoir

As I mentioned, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is admirably free of grammatical errors. In fact; I noted only one possible error, and that turned out to be correct. But there are a few omissions and puzzling passages, and some things that are noteworthy. I'll discuss those things here. Quotations from the book are shown in blue.

Page 19: Her suicide attempt, at age 14 (?), caused her parents considerable angst. But she never mentions her siblings' reactions. (They are Mike, David, Denver John, and Holly Ann.) She writes, "Of course, no one talked to me about what I had done, not directly. There was no counseling, no therapy, no group that I might go to, no suicide or grief counselor who would be sent for. These were still the dark ages for mental health issues."

Page 21: "In 1950, long before the advent of the 'crossover' phenomenon, Stafford made the album American Folk Songs at the height of her popular success. In fact, the album was part of a folk music revival that was taking hold around the country. 'Barbara Allen' was on that album, along with 'Shenandoah' and 'Black is the Color.' Before I ever heard of Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger, Jo Stafford and Elton Hayes, the singer in the movie, put me in touch with the beauty and the wonder of folk music." The movie was The Black Knight, a 1954 Arthurian adventure starring Alan Ladd. Elton Hayes played the part of the minstrel, and sang the song that so grabbed Judy's attention: "The Gypsy Rover."

Pages 22-23: Lingo the Drifter (Paul Lezchuk) This character deserves to be better known IMO. The same goes for her father, Chuck Collins, who she describes lovingly in the book. Blind since childhood, he got around better than some sighted people. Both he and Lezchuk had radio shows in Denver back in the day.

Page 25: "Blondel, Richard the Lionheart's troubadour, saved his master's life by hunting out all the prisons where he might be kept and singing a song outside the castle walls until he heard Richard's response. He then sent for help to free his king." There was such a troubadour: Jean 'Blondel' de Nesle, a French trouvère. The story, however, appears to be legend, since Richard's jailers were proud of holding him.

Page 29: "From his teenage years, Daddy always wore hand-painted glass eyes to cover the ravaged scar tissue left when he lost his sight as a child." On page 28, she says his sight began to fail almost from the time of his birth on an Idaho farm in 1911. So why the scar tissue?

Page 31: The poems of Don Blanding, including "Vagabond House." Does this tie into Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House (a 1948 movie starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas)?

Page 33: "But later, when I was nineteen and pregnant, my mother and I got rip-roaring drunk one afternoon..." Tragically, this was the dark ages for fetal alcohol syndrome, as well. There was little knowledge about this condition, which can lead to drug addiction in the child. Most authorities put these disabilities down to heredity; only in 1973 was FAS formally recognized by medical professionals.

Page 41: She enrolled at MacMurray College in Illinois. She became pregnant with Clark, her only son, by Peter Taylor, and had to drop out. There followed lean years as she married Peter (when?) and they worked summers at Fern Lake Lodge high in the Colorado Rockies for a time, he chopping wood and tending the water system, she cooking and cleaning. She writes, "It still feels like paradise lost." I reach that, Judy; I really do.1

Pages 48-50: When Clark was born they lived in Boulder. Peter was going for a BA in English literature; she had a job filing papers at the University of Colorado. Then Peter asked her, "Why don't you get a job doing something you know how do to? Like singing?" So, through her father's friend, she got an audition at Michael's Pub, a local pizza place. Despite the fact that the owner, Mike Bisesi, said he hated folk music, he hired her on the spot for $100 a week. From that day forward, Boulder had a folk-song club and Judy had a career. What puzzles me is the fact that someone had to suggest this to her. Something similar happened with songwriting: in this case it was Leonard Cohen who made the suggestion. (page 213)

Pages 54-55: She had a gig at the Gilded Garter in Central City. The club was owned by Warren St. Thomas, who also ran The Tropics, Denver's premier strip club. She and Peter went to see Tempest Storm, "The girl with the fabulous front," and she admits to wondering why she herself does not have a fabulous front. Now I can't speak from first-hand knowledge, obviously, but to me this seems the sort of unjustified body worry that plagues women who become bulimic, as she later did.

Page 55: A young fellow named Robert Zimmerman shows up at the Gilded Garter. He hails from Hibbing, Minnesota. Little does she know, then...

Pages 59-60: Josh White, a confidant of FDR — blacklisted during the fifties, but now recording again.

Page 69: "Will [Holt] had studied at Exeter and also at the Aspen School for American Minstrels. The school was started by the English countertenor Richard Dyer-Bennett..." I found little about this school online. Richard Dyer-Bennett started it soon after he and his wife moved to Aspen in 1947. But his career demanded he move back to New York City two years later. Apparently the school folded soon after that.

Page 69: "One of the things I learned from Will [Holt] was that you could protest and be a force of change while looking dapper, being elegant, and having manners. You could cut like steel, sting like a wasp, go for the jugular with language, style, wit, and music while wearing a suit and tie."

Page 102: She's too drunk to walk back alone to the Cass Hotel in Chicago at four in the morning — so Bob Gibson gives her a loaded gun. She's never handled a gun before. The result is predictable. Fortunately, no one gets hurt.

Page 106: "What Walter knew about the physical act of love came as a revelation, like fireworks suddenly filling a black sky with brilliant light and electricity. I was simply overwhelmed." This seems incongruous, given the experience she's had by 1962. But who am I to judge? The one thing I know, after all these years, is that individual knowledge of sexuality, and its expression in the physical act of love, are as varied as human personality itself.

Page 113: Senator Mike Mansfield visits Viet Nam, speaks out against the war: the first politician to do so, apparently.

Pages 129-30: Harry Stack Sullivan's The Conditions of Human Growth and the Sullivanians, a cult that touted promiscuity and drinking. "But I sure got a lot of mileage out of the Sullivanian belief that alcohol was good for anxiety, and that having multiple sex partners was a political statement and a healthy lifestyle." Just as the "Sullivanians" got a lot of mileage out of being associated with the name of Harry Stack Sullivan, although most professionals felt they distorted his teachings. And Judy misattributes The Conditions of Human Growth: It was written by Jane Pearce and Saul Newton. Wikipedia:

"In 1957 Newton and his wife, Dr. Jane Pearce, founded the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis in New York. They had previously worked at the William Alanson White Institute, but had left several years after the death of Harry Stack Sullivan, one of the Institute's founders. Although Newton and Pearce's institute was named after Sullivan, it was widely seen as offering a distorted version of Sullivan's teaching."

Page 141: "They were surreal together, entwined in the lights and the searing soul of the sixties. Some said they were that searing soul." "They" meaning Joan Baez and Bob Dylan (né Robert Zimmerman.)

Page 153: The chapter lead-in quotes a line from "It Isn't Nice". Malvina Reynolds wrote that?! Speaking of searing souls... (Unlike other lead-in quote songs, "It Isn't Nice" is not indexed.)

Page 153: "The journalist David Halberstam was openly criticizing the war in the New York Times, writing about the lies we were being told, helping to lift the veil of the 1950s, when we automatically believed that those in power told the truth." "What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?" The Mitchell Trio recorded that Tom Paxton song; a popular folk group of the 1960s and later, The Mitchell Trio is mentioned in the book (but not indexed); John Denver, who joined them in 1965 before launching a prominent solo career, is never mentioned. I find his omission very puzzling — especially given the name of Judy's brother.

Page 160: "Also in 1964, Lenny Bruce spent four months in jail for obscenity; Michelle Obama and Glenn Beck were born; and it cost 5 cents to send a letter..." The index points to Lenny Bruce on this page, but not Michelle Obama or Glenn Beck. If they're important enough to mention, they're important enough to index.

Page 162: Fannie Lou Hamer, sterilized without her knowledge in 1961.

Page 233: "I didn't understand how drugs worked, actually, and the last time I had taken a pill out of a stranger's hand in L.A. at a rock-and-roll party, the pill turned out to be Thorazine. I spent twenty-four hours rolled into a ball in the corner of my host's living room. So I didn't usually do drugs." Thorazine (Chlorpromazine) is an anti-psychotic drug. From Wikipedia (emphasis added):

"The main side effects of chlorpromazine are due to its anticholinergic properties; these effects overshadow and counteract, to some extent, the extrapyramidal side effects typical of many early generation antipsychotics. These include sedation, slurred speech, dry mouth, constipation, urinary retention and possible lowering of seizure threshold. Appetite may be increased with resultant weight gain, and glucose tolerance may be impaired. It lowers blood pressure with accompanying dizziness. Memory loss and amnesia have also been reported. Chlorpromazine, which has sedating effects, will increase sleep time when given at high doses or when first administered, although tolerance usually develops. Antipsychotics do not alter sleep cycles or REM sleep."

Pages 291-2: "I then put together a team, starting with my co-director, Jill Godmilow, a talented New York documentary filmmaker who would share the directorial credits with me on Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, which would later be nominated for awards at Sundance and other festivals for many films, including Waiting for the Moon." This does not make sense; there must be some text missing after the word "festivals." In 2003, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman was designated by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

1 This is a reference to "The Way to Eden", a Star Trek episode.
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