Customer Reviews

Judy Sings Dylan Just Like a Woman

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Sometimes an album cover tells it all, and if this cover was true to the music, I knew it was going to be an outstanding collection. The monochrome brick road with the dingy factory-like buildings on each side, and here's Judy looking smart and weathered and a little cocky. It seemed she had something to say to her fans, and she sure did. Her voice was ripe, ready and within range (which it isn't always) on all these Dylan songs. "Like A Rolling Stone" took guts to re-record. Who can top Dylan's sarcastic to the point original? no one! However, she puts her own melodic sarcastic spin on it with great success. She gave this one some wings. I never get tired of hearing a new version of this one. This version is one of the best interpretations. "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Simple Twist Of Fate" had a Joan Baez quality (I say that as a great compliment). These recordings could have been late 60's/early 70's hits. They would have been classics today had they been recorded back then. "Sweetheart Like You" and "Gotta Serve Somebody" take her to a place she doesn't usually go. The "monochrome brick road" on the album cover is captured in these two songs. Rougher and rawer than I thought she could do well. "Dark Eyes" doesn't measure up to the rest. Probably because the others are simply that good. "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is classic Judy. She exceeds Dylan on this one. "Just Like A Woman" and "I Believe In You" are quieter than the rest of the other songs but make this album what it is: a superior collection and tribute to Dylan and his music. "With God On Our Side" is a tough song to do. Baez did the best version. However, this is right behind Baez's version. What this version lacks in poignance is mades up by its angelic hauntingly beautiful interpretation, especially the last note, one of her finest moments. "Bob Dylan's Dream" is another one she does better than Dylan. I can really appreciate the lyrics. She's clear and crisp in a way that allows you to sit back and take it all in and really savor the words and the lyrics. I really believe this collection would be a classic today if it had come out in the early 70's. But then, some of these songs hadn't been written yet. However, the texture doesn't fit the high tech digital world of the 90's. Maybe that makes this collection more significant.

This is really a lovely album by a more mature Judy Collins, who is still in full voice and ready to rock and roll a little around the edges in delivering what she characterizes as an open love letter to Bob Dylan and his music. Like a number of notable others like Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Tom Rush, and Peter, Paul, And Mary, Judy was around to watch as Bob Dylan emerged from obscurity to become the voice and the conscience of a generation. This, then, is her tribute to that phenomenon. Her choice of songs to use to celebrate him is telling in and of itself.

She opens with "Like A Rolling Stone", delivered in a jazzy folk style that really is a quite novel interpretation of the much-recorded song. Next is "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", followed by a "Simple Twist Of Fate", delivered in a more traditional folk style. Her selections range from the very well known, such as "Just Like A Woman" and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" to the more obscure, such as "Sweetheart Like You" and "Dark Eyes". I especially like her interpretation of "Gotta Serve Someone", from Dylan's brief born-again phase, and the reworking of "With God On Our Side", a song made famous by Joan Baez in the early 1960s. All in all, this album turns out to be exactly what Judy claims she wanted it to be, a very personal expression of love and admiration for the work of a man with amazing songwriting talents and a very sustained career that now stretches over some forty years. Enjoy!

I like six of these 11 choices a great deal. The other five seem elongated unneccessarily, over-produced, and even pretentious. But maybe I have lived too long with Judy and Bob being important to me. I have owned Dylan on record since early 1963 and Collins later the same year. I am not a completist, but I have had probably ten Dylan albums and seven Collins' records in my collections at times. I saw Judy live three separate times in the 60's. I have also owned collections of Bob's songs by Baez and by several others. I suppose I am just a grouchy geezer now, but I prefer the output each artist had before 1970 to the material I have heard from them since that time. All that said, this CD is a good value for the price if you like either one or both. Sometimes, Dylan's own version of his song is the only one that works, and sometimes his own rendition is the worst one you'll hear. At least with Judy, you can comprehend all the words. She has a nice backing band here, but fans will endlessly quibble about the song choices, which seem, from the booklet, to be Judy's own favorites. I love the way she decided to present "Simple Twist of Fate" and "With God on Our Side" and "Just Like a Woman". I strongly like "I Believe in You" and "Bob Dylan's Dream." The other choices I either like Bob's own version better, or Joan Baez' version, which is available on the CD "Baez Sings Dylan" on Vanguard. All three were friends, once, in the days before stardom and in its first glow. Judy's album of Dylan songs came out in 1993. The Baez collection is a reissue from 1968 and earlier. Real fans will find it interesting to compare the two products. Judy includes four of Dylan's later songs along with seven from his first decade of work. This is not a bad issue, and with repeated listening I will most likely come to like it more...but it does not make a person sit up and say "Wow!", when, with some different songs, performed more with gusto than with an "artsy" concept, it might have done just that.

I had been a fan of Judy Collins way back at the tail end of the 60's
and early 70's. After a time, she became much more of a chanteuse than
a folk or folk/rock singer and for the most part, lost me. I've always
felt her greatest accomplishment was the "Who Knows Where The
Time Goes" album in late 68. I feel that this is probably her
best work since then. Her voice is in top form (She was 55 at the
time) and the backing musicians and arrangements are top notch. It's a
fairly long disc and probably could have done without one or two
tracks, but all in all this is destined to become one of her defining
works. My personal favorites here are "It's all Over Now, Baby
Blue" "Dark Eyes" "Love Minus Zero/No Limit"
and the title track.

One of the great undiscovered/unheralded albums of the 90's. Too bad, it's almost perfection. What a combination - Dylan's devastatingly insightful lyrics and Judy's vulnerable, beautiful voice. And recorded with a rock band, not the soft-pop sound Judy so often does, for authentic Dylan-ness. Judy was there, singing, strumming and we-shall-overcoming, when these songs were written. She is one the few singers who can interpret these songs with such genuine artistic authority. Love Minus Zero/No Limit and Bob Dylan's Dream will make you cry.

I expected -given Judy Collins' voice- that this CD would be beautiful, but what kept me sitting in the parked car, still listening, when I got home was her interpretations: so knowing. The arrangements are excellent (they don't overwhelm her voice at all, despite what an earlier reviewer wrote). Her "Like A Rolling Stone" doesn't match Dylan's original but it grows on me (the quiet beginning has a sadness that I've never before associated with this song ... the harmonica here refers, of course, back to Dylan's original, but here it evokes a wistfulness). Collins doesn't just sing songs like "Dark Eyes" and "Simple Twist Of Fate," she inhabits them. Her spoken/sung delivery of "Sweetheart Like You" is enjoyably surprising ... it's like nothing else I've heard by Judy Collins. It appears that this CD is going out of print. Who knows why. I'm very glad I finally got a copy of it. Maybe it only rates 4 1/2 stars but I won't quibble:-)
Btw, the liner notes/letter to Dylan by Judy Collins I didn't at all find to be written by "a self-indulgent overly-romantic middle aged woman" (an earlier reviewer). Judy Collin's only child had just died tragically and I doubt she was feeling "self-indulgent" at all. her "letter" to Dylan is poetic, nostalgic, honest and has some brief passages written so opaquely that Dylan is probably the only one who knows to what she refers.

I have never been much of a Judy Collins fan, but this album of Dylan's songs combined with her voice is nothing short of beautiful. With God On Our Side is only one of the songs that gives me chills whenever I hear this album. If you are a fan of Dylan's songs, but not a big fan of his voice, this is an album for you.

I stumbled into this CD at the library - never would have picked it up at a record store. After I returned it, it stayed in my mind for a year until finally I had to buy it. I have to disagree with Thomas Lapins's review above in one spot: "Dark Eyes" is my favorite song on the album...absolutely beautiful.

I too am amazed by some of the negative reviews - this album is a gem...from someone who has known Dylan her entire adult life. The liner notes recount her first meeting with Bob Dylan when she was 19 years old (and he was even younger) while both were singing in a Colorado skiing resort - before each had migrated to New York City to make their careers. She was visiting Dylan when he wrote "Mister Tambourine Man" - and was the first person to hear him sing it! She was at the Newport Folk Festival when he debuted his "electric" band (and was roundly booed by the "folk purists").
I think she has a unique vantage point from which to render interpretations of his songs - and she does an inspired job on this recording, offering Dylan's incomparable lyrics with an ability to convey his melodies with a beautiful voice.
I recommend this album wholeheartedly.

What's your favorite Dylan cover? Well Joe Cocker & The Grease Band do an outstanding job on "Dear Landlord"...The Byrds of course own "Mr Tambourine Man...The Band's "I Shall Be Released" still sends chills...I flat out love Jimi Hendrix's "All Along The Watch Tower". Richie Heavens is so soulful on "Just Like A Woman". Wait!...How about the beautiful George Harrison take on "If Not For You"...Wow!!! With all these and many more great Dylan covers one might think that the best low-hanging fruit had already been picked.

Thankfully Judy has gathered some of that material along with a few of Bob's great but lesser known compositions. How about "Simple Twist of Fate"? Yes! I know Joan Baez has done it and done it well. But I think Judy positively nails it. And the same goes for "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", "Gotta Serve Somebody" and "It's All Over Now Baby Blue". Yes, I would have loved the inclusion of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" from Judys fantastic In My Life album. And I sure wouldn't have a problem with her take on "I Pity The Poor Immigrant". Nonetheless I can't keep this collection off my playlist. As always Sweet Judy Blue Eyes does it "Just Like A Winner/Woman".