Judy Collins Archives

Good, Better, Best: Stephen Sondheim’s “Send In the Clowns” (Part 1)

Posted by Seuras Og at 12:01 pm 1 Response »

Sep 192025

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Is there a ghastlier song than “Send In the Clowns”? The epitome of musical thea-ter (dahling), a go-to for any and every luvvy guesting on a TV show, invited then to sing us a song. Unspeakably vile, it is a song that must surely have some redeeming feature, to be drawn out of its saccharine turgidity. I mean, the bible of cover songs, Second Hand Songs, lists five and a half hundred iterations of the damned song, so surely there must be a “5 Good Covers” amongst them? Surely? I fear the title of this piece reveals the sickly truth.

Let’s get the details out the way. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: “‘Send In the Clowns’ is a song written by Stephen Sondheim for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles Of a Summer Night. It is a ballad from Act Two, in which the character Desirée reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life.” Two shocks there. First: I thought it came out a lot longer ago than 1973. Second: Bergman? It seems impossible to imagine the dour Swede having much truck with such lightweight frippery. But that is merely my view, with untold experts subsequently citing the song’s magnificence. It took a while for it to transcend the stage musical, not broaching the Billboard charts until Judy Collins brought it to #36 in 1975, and to #19 in 1977.

Frank Sinatra, in the meantime, had released it on his comeback album, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, setting the song along the road to it becoming a jazz standard. Sure, Sinatra tackles it with characteristic brio, and, vocally, it can’t faulted. It is just the wretched source material. Jazz, of course, in the context of standard does not generally equate with anything exciting or innovative, or indeed anything much to do with what I call jazz, it smacking more of big band MOR, easy listening for the easily pleased. Sure, otherwise reliable artists have given it a go, as an instrumental, but, even shorn of the pompously execrable lyrics, most come up short, shackled by the limitations of the melody. (Honorable exception is country maverick, Tyler Childers (here), who found a pearl within the snail shell.)

Disclaimer: I didn’t listen to every version. I couldn’t, on health grounds, and would challenge anyone of a normal disposition so to do. But I did take a look at the list, in no small detail, cherry picking names of those who might be able to step outside of expectations. Indeed, in particular, I had high hopes for Pete Burns and for Stan Ridgway. Burns, the flamboyant frontman of Dead and Alive, must be able, I thought, to buff it up into something idiosyncratic and memorable. Wrong. And Ridgway, the Wall of Voodoo man, turning then to oddball narrative songs, he’d give it some grit. Also wrong. So that’s my 5 gone for a burton.

Who’s left?
Continue reading »

Meshell Ndegeocello Resurrects Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It with Mine” in New Cover

Posted by Riley Haas at 2:02 pm 1 Response »

Aug 012023

meshell ndegeocello i'll keep it with mine

“I’ll Keep It with Mine” is one of those innumerable Bob Dylan songs he recorded in the 1960s but didn’t release and someone else did. In this case, it was Judy Collins who released it first. The two other prominent covers of the era are by Nico and Fairport Convention. Dylan’s demos show different approaches to the vocal melody, more idiosyncratic than the famous cover versions. Nico keeps some of Dylan’s vocal idiosyncrasies but otherwise adopts a similar approach to Collins. Fairport Convention’s version, on the other hand, is very faithful to Collins’ version as opposed to Dylan’s demos. Continue reading »

The Twenty Best Bob Dylan Covers Albums

Posted by Seuras Og at 2:00 pm 7 Responses »

May 212021

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

As a companion piece to our best Bob Dylan single song covers post, coming this Monday, it’s worth considering the myriad tribute albums to the bard of Duluth. To narrow that down at least marginally, we’ll focus on those by an individual band or artist (several Dylan sets appeared on our recent best tribute compilations countdown). There are a lot of them, many more even than you might imagine, encompassing all styles and stages of his ever-changing moods. So let’s start setting some real guidelines here…

We’ll rule out those put together retrospectively as a compilation, so no The Byrds Play Dylan or Postcards of the Hanging by The Grateful Dead. This piece only addresses those made for and released at one sitting. Space begets also a ruthlessness that further excludes participants put together solely and especially for one specific recording, so farewell the excellent Dylan’s Gospel and the intriguing Dylan Jazz. Finally, this is a Top Twenty list, squeezing out many further worthy gems like Joan Osborne’s Songs of Bob Dylan and Robbie Fulks’ 16, a track-by-track take on Street Legal that has some of the best individual songs, frustratingly alongside some decidedly not, perhaps due to the songs and not the singer. Finally, I felt it would be interesting/indulgent to add two essential bits of information about each record:

1. What is the deepest cut contained?
2: Does it feature “Like a Rolling Stone,” the benchmark Dylan song?

Will you disagree with my selections? Sure, and that’s fine, it’s what the comments area is for. Let me know what you think shouldn’t have missed the cut, and what shouldn’t have made it.
Continue reading »

The Best Leonard Cohen Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 7:00 am 12 Responses »

Sep 032020

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Last week, Donald Trump gave his headlining speech at the Republican National Convention. Right after, fireworks exploded over the Washington Monument, soundtracked by a cover of “Hallelujah.” A few minutes later, a second singer covered “Hallelujah” while the entire Trump family watched. Both covers were unauthorized, and Leonard Cohen’s estate quickly said they are exploring legal action. (It must also be said that the covers weren’t very good – you won’t find either one on this list.)

Though hardly a shining moment in the history of Cohen covers, this event speaks to the cultural ubiquity of his work, and of “Hallelujah” in particular. For an artist who never sold that many records, Cohen has become about as iconic as icons get. Humble to the end, he would no doubt object – politely, of course – to that statement. But it’s true. His songs transcend his albums, they transcend his performances, they even transcend Leonard Cohen himself.

There’s never a bad time to talk about Leonard Cohen covers, but they’ve really been on my mind the past couple years. Why? Because I’ve been writing an entire book on the subject, which is out today. It’s in the 33 1/3 series of small books on specific albums. The album I selected? The 1991 tribute album I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. Without it, you probably wouldn’t even know “Hallelujah”… but we’ll get to that later.

In the book, I explore not just that one tribute album, but the entire history of Leonard Cohen covers generally. It’s a long and fascinating story, but suffice to say here that Cohen wouldn’t have had anywhere near the reach he did without others covering his songs. Covers gave him his start – Judy Collins’s, in particular – and resurrected his career more than once.

There are far too many great Cohen covers to fit in a list like this (and our Patreon supporters will soon get a bonus list of 100 more of them). But we all dug deep to pull the highlights, both the best of the totemic covers as well as brilliant but lesser-known interpretations. The covers span his entire catalog too. Plenty of “Hallelujah”s, of course, and versions of the ’60s songs that made him famous, but also covers of deeper cuts from albums throughout his recording career, up to and including his very last. We hope you’ll discover some new favorites, and maybe be able to listen to the classics you already know in a fresh light.

– Ray Padgett, Editor-in-Chief

Buy I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen here:
Bloomsbury | Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes and Noble | Bookshop

The list begins on Page 2.

Hear Two Extremely Different New Covers of Canadian Anthem “Northwest Passage”

Posted by Ray Padgett at 9:00 am No Responses »

Oct 172019

Stan Rogers’ folk song “Northwest Passage” has been called the unofficial Canadian national anthem – and by a Canadian Prime Minister, no less. Two incredibly different covers that have come out recently add more evidence to that claim, and show that the song may be crossing the country’s southern border just as it crosses genre lines. Continue reading »

Covering the Hits: “Cat’s in the Cradle” (Harry Chapin)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 2:00 pm 1 Response »

Apr 192019

“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty-odd years.

No number one hit says “massive guilt trip” like Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.” It’s become a shorthand reference to neglectful father-son parenting, featured in popular culture from Simpsons to Shrek the Third, and Stevie Wonder only wishes he prompted as many phone calls just to say “I love you.”

It started off as a poem by Sandy Chapin, Harry’s wife, inspired by the relationship between her first husband and his father. “He came home and I showed him the poem, and he sort of brushed it aside,” she said. But a year later Harry had become a father, and found himself living the life his wife had written about; he wrote music and a chorus, and David Geffen selected it to be a single. “You can’t do that; it’s ridiculous,” Sandy told him. “That song will only appeal to 45-year-old men, and they don’t buy records.” Harry himself wanted to re-record the song, saying “It’s terrible, just terrible. It’s much too fast a tempo.” Both of them were proved very wrong, as the song went to #1 in December 1974.