She became pregnant and married her first husband, Peter Taylor, in 1958, when she was 19. Her father was an alcoholic Judy fell victim to the disease very early in her career. It was lifestyle that nearly killed Judy Collins. She was also at the forefront of the hard living, substance-abusing lifestyle that characterized so much of the 60s, and which killed many of its brightest hopes. Judy was at the vanguard of the folk music revival, breathing new life into traditional and classic folks songs, and wrapping her rich, mellow soprano around new compositions by Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, Sandy Denny and Leonard Cohen, among many others. These were small clubs in Greenwich Village, before Dylan’s plugged-in performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that heralded a new era in music: folk-rock. Other reviewers accuse her of name-dropping, but how could she not? She was hanging out with and performing alongside Joan and Mimi Baez, Peter Yarrow, Bob Dylan, Marshall Brickman, the Clancy Brothers, John Phillips- and this is the very early '60’s - '60-'64 - years before the Summer of Love. Collins, who was 71 when she penned this memoir, does a simple and lovely job of laying out her early years as a budding folk singer, first Colorado, then Chicago, before breaking into the folk scene in New York in the early 60’s. She is pop radio on rainy Saturday afternoons. Her voice takes me to the milky, muted greens and blues of my childhood in Oregon and on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the early – late 70’s. Judy Collins’s music conjures up different images. Judy was his inspiration, his muse, the older woman who broke his heart. How could I not read Judy Collins’s memoir Sweet Judy Blue Eyes? Stephen Stills vividly captured the passion and pain of their love affair in his joyful, yet plaintive epic song.

Each time I hear this song, I feel I missed the best part of a generation. It is 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes', first performed by Crosby, Stills and Nash on Augat Yasgur’s farm, two weeks before I was born.

It never fails to transport me to a time beyond my memory, a place that now fades into American mythology: California, late 1960's. It has always been one of my favorite songs. The sweet chords in E pour forth from Stephen Stills's guitar, sounding like early morning California sunshine feels: warm and flirtatious, dancing on an ocean breeze as it kisses you awake. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music by Judy Collins

Judy blue eyes cover