Monday, 10 October 2022

True Stories & Other Dreams - JUDY COLLINS****

Cook With Honey/So Begins The Task/Fishermen Song/The Dealer (Down & Losin')/Secret Garden/Holly Ann/ The Hostage/Song For Martin/Che

Folk singer Judy Collins achieved her reputation as an interpreter of other people’s songs. However on True Stories & Other Dreams over half the tracks are her own compositions. (US:27)

“This LP is a wonderful introduction to anyone unfamiliar with the amazing range of Judy Collins talents as a singer, songwriter, and arranger of her own work. Early in her career she sang songs written almost exclusively by others. Yet here she shows just how accomplished a songwriter and lyricist she became over the span of her career. This song cycle stands as a timely reminder of why Judy has a place reserved in the pantheon of folk greats.”

“I always thought of this as Judy Collins's saddest album. This is indeed an album of its times. Cook With Honey is certainly catchy, fitting right in with other 'nature-pop' songs of the era. For me, the landmark song is Secret Gardens, the poetry of this song, the perfect melding of music and lyrics, still stuns me.”

“Judy Collins has the rare talent of taking ordinary words and making them into something magical and beautiful. Her very personal lyrics, though never maudlin, achieve the universal.”

“Ironically, given Collins' brilliant singing voice, she took more than a decade to find her voice as a songwriter. She'd dabbled with an original song or two on earlier albums, but for this release she wrote over half the tracks. The years that she'd been carefully selecting and sympathetically interpreting others' material paid off in the imagination of her pen.”

“Collins' songwriting on this album shows her to be an inspired, sometimes brilliant composer. For the remaining songs, she selected prime material. This is one of Judy’s major releases and it deserved to be much more commercially successful than it was at the time. It shows her off as both a premier songwriter and interpreter of contemporary material.”

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