Judy Collins - Portrait of An American Girl '2005

Tracks list

       For about a quarter century, through the 1960s and ‘70s and up to
the mid-‘80s, Judy Collins released a new album nearly every year on
Elektra Records, which began as an independent folk label and, during her tenure
there, expanded into rock and was sold to the major label Warner Bros. Records.
Collins' annual albums mixed traditional folk material with songs by the crop of
new, up-and-coming folk-rock singer/songwriters and, as of her 1967 LP
Wildflowers, one or more of her own original compositions, which tended to be
piano ballads with personal, poetic lyrics that touched on her own family. After
Collins left Elektra at the end of 1984, she recorded less frequently, and when
she did she usually went in for thematic albums -- children's albums, Christmas
albums, live albums, songbook albums, albums of re-recordings of her hits, etc.
Meanwhile, she drifted from label to label until founding her own label,
Wildflower Records, in 1999. 2005's Portrait of an American Girl is her first
album since 1990's Fires of Eden that might be termed a "regular" Judy Collins
album in the sense that she used to make them, a newly recorded collection of
varied material. She begins it with the first of five original compositions,
"Singing Lessons," which is also the title of a memoir she published in 1998
and, in song form, is a prayer and invocation setting the tone for the record.
The strongest tie to her old LPs may be the next track, "That Song About the
Midway," a Joni Mitchell song of the same vintage as "Both Sides Now" and
"Chelsea Morning," which Collins made into hits and standards. She has written
that, since the suicide of her son, Clark Taylor, in 1992, every song she writes
is about him. Certainly, that is true of "I Can't Cry Hard Enough," as it may be
of "Voyager" and definitely is of "Checkmate," all songs in which she laments
the absence of a loved one. But Taylor is not the subject of "Wedding Song (Song
for Louis)," except by his absence from Collins' wedding to her long-time
partner Louis Nelson, which this a cappella performance commemorates. In
addition to these originals, she further strengthens her long-lasting ties to
folk music by covering the works of Bruce Cockburn ("Pacing the Cage") and Pete
Seeger ("How Can I Keep from Singing"), and evokes her classical background and
sense of Americana by reciting the text of Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait."
The album's least effective tracks are the ones in which she tries to rock out a
little and be contemporary, covering the old Jaynetts hit "Sally Go ‘Round
the Roses" and the more recent Train hit "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)," neither
of which benefit from her considered interpretations; but at least they provide
changes of pace. These false steps aside, Collins remains, at 65, in possession
of excellent musical taste and a wonderful voice on an album that will remind
old fans of what her records used to be like.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Judy Collins - Singing Lessons (4:03)
1.02 - Judy Collins - That Song About The Midway (4:07)
1.03 - Judy Collins - I Can't Cry Hard Enough (3:17)
1.04 - Judy Collins - You Can't Buy Love (3:12)
1.05 - Judy Collins - Pacing The Cage (4:02)
1.06 - Judy Collins - Sally Go 'round The Roses (3:25)
1.07 - Judy Collins - Voyager (3:00)
1.08 - Judy Collins - Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me) (4:02)
1.09 - Judy Collins - Wedding Song (Song For Louis) (3:49)
1.10 - Judy Collins - Checkmate (6:06)
1.11 - Judy Collins - Liberte (3:07)
1.12 - Judy Collins - Lincoln Portrait (7:12)
1.13 - Judy Collins - How Can I Keep From Singing (3:54) 

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