Judy Collins: Amazing Grace

What It Takes®

Academy of Achievement

Music, Sports, Arts, Self-help, Technology, Science, Humanitarian, Achievement, Film, Social Justice, Success, Society & Culture, Literature, Podcast, Politics, Military

4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2020

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's no mistaking Judy Collins' voice. She sang us through the 1960's and '70's, and hasn't stopped since. Today at 81, her voice is still strong and gorgeous. It reveals no signs of the struggles she has survived: depression, alcoholism, polio, tuberculosis, threatening injuries to her vocal chords and hands, and the suicide of her son. In this interview she talks frankly about how she carried on through these tragedies, and she eloquently describes how she knows when a song is right for her. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2020

Transcript

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0:00.0	Amazing Grace, how sweet the sun that says. sound that saved a
0:15.0	a wretch like me.
0:22.0	I want. This voice, this sweet, pure voice that sounds as if it sprung up from a meadow.
0:31.2	Who would guess it was the voice of survival? Growing up, Judy Collins was often
0:37.0	on the record player in my house. My parents, my sister, my brother, and I, we all loved her a generation crosser a voice that gave
0:46.6	serenity and hope in an era of turmoil and protest I had no idea back in the 1960s and 70s and
0:55.0	I had no idea back in the 1960s and 70s that Judy Collins suffered from depression and alcoholism
0:59.0	and that over her lifetime she battled polio, tuberculosis, bulimia, and the death of her son from suicide,
1:08.6	as well as injuries to her vocal cords and her hands that could have ended her career.
1:15.4	But listen to Judy Collins at 80 years old.
1:18.8	This is one of her own compositions, Blizzard, on an album released last year called Winter's Stories.
1:26.0	One night on the mountain I was headed forest is
1:30.0	when the road turned to ice and it started to snow.
1:35.0	Put on the chains in a whirl of white powder,
1:39.1	halfway up to Berse it near a diner I know and the light burned inside shining down through the
1:46.8	snowfall God it was cold and the temperature dropping
1:52.3	Judy Collins voice like some sort of And Judy Collins is on this episode of What It Takes, a podcast about passion, vision, and
2:05.2	perseverance from the Academy of Achievement.
2:09.6	I'm Alice Winkler. Adam, this child is gifted.
2:14.7	And I heard that enough that I started to believe it.
2:17.0	If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another job.
2:23.0	It all was so clear.
	...

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