Seattle-born Judy Collins kicks off her \u201cfarewell tour\u201d on PBS\u2019 semiquincentennial special \u201cAmerica Made in Virginia: 250 Years Together\u201d (7 p.m. Saturday, KCTS-TV), a telecast from Virginia\u2019s Colonial Williamsburg that mixes live performance with historical interpretation and fireworks.<\/p>\n
Collins, 87, traces her roots back to Seattle, where she was born. She credits her radio broadcaster father with helping to set her on her career path.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father was a great entertainer,\u201d Collins says during a recent Zoom interview. \u201cHe had a 30-year career in the radio business, and he started in Seattle in 1937, and he met my mother, and then I was born in \u201839. I was surrounded by music all the time. He was a very, very popular radio personality in Seattle, and then in Los Angeles, and then in Denver. He had a really good run.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judy\u2019s father, Chuck Collins, hosted \u201cChuck Collins Calling,\u201d a morning radio show on KOMO-AM. Even after the family left the Pacific Northwest, Collins returned to Seattle regularly to visit both sets of grandparents and other relatives, including her aunt Jeanette, who lived to be 100.<\/p>\n
For \u201cAmerica Made in Virginia,\u201d Collins will likely sing a few songs, including \u201cBeyond the Sky,\u201d a song NASA commissioned her to write for astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission in 1999. (They are not related.)<\/p>\n
Creating her own songs \u2014 rather than reinterpreting the works of others \u2014 wasn\u2019t something Judy Collins did from the start. It was around the time Collins recorded Leonard Cohen\u2019s \u201cSuzanne\u201d in 1966 that Cohen said to her, \u201cI don’t know why you aren’t writing your own songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I went to the piano in the next room, and I wrote a song called \u2018Since You’ve Asked,\u2019 which is the first song that I wrote, and I’ve never stopped writing songs,\u201d Collins says.<\/p>\n
Collins notes it wasn\u2019t the first time she\u2019d been asked the question, but it was how Cohen asked it.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Bob) Dylan would say to me, \u2018Why don’t you write your own songs, (instead of singing) mine?\u2019 And that’s just rude, you know?\u201d Collins says. \u201cWith Leonard \u2026 it’s the way he said the question.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to performing songs written by others, Collins\u2019 goal is to make it her own.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrank Sinatra didn’t write any of his songs, but he made them his own, and I did the same thing,\u201d she says. \u201cIt wasn’t Frank Sinatra who had the hit with \u2018Send in the Clowns\u2019; it was me.\u201d<\/p>\n
How she reinterprets songs to make them her own is something she chalks up to an innate sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s from the cradle,\u201d Collins says. \u201cI think that I heard my father singing \u2018Danny Boy\u2019 when I was in the womb. \u2026 It’s your song when you have heard it and you learn it, and you sing it wherever you are. My father was a great interpreter. He was a great performer. He chose the right songs, and that’s what I seem to have inherited. I know which ones are for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to her performance on the PBS special, Collins has tour dates scheduled into next year, including two stops in Washington this fall in Port Angeles on Sept. 29 and Kirkland on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mix the show up,\u201d Collins says. \u201cI always try to make it different so I\u2019m not singing the same things every night.\u201d<\/p>\n
But her biggest hits like \u201cBoth Sides Now,\u201d \u201cSend in the Clowns\u201d and \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d almost always make the cut.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019ll always try to get the audience to sing,\u201d Collins adds. \u201cI’m pretty sure that an audience in Seattle, and in the environs of Seattle, Wash., will sing. People have learned to sing in the choruses, in the churches, in the choirs. \u2026 It’s a great reliever of tension. If you can get an audience to sing \u2018Danny Boy,\u2019 you’re in good position.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as this tour\u2019s billing as a \u201cfarewell tour,\u201d Collins suggests taking that with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou remember all of the groups that have done \u2018farewell tours,\u2019 which lasted a number of years? I can name 20,\u201d Collins says with a grin. \u201cI will always be performing as long as I’m alive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seattle-born Judy Collins kicks off her \u201cfarewell tour\u201d on PBS\u2019 semiquincentennial special \u201cAmerica Made in Virginia: 250 Years Together\u201d (7 p.m. Saturday, KCTS-TV), a telecast from Virginia\u2019s Colonial Williamsburg that mixes live performance with historical interpretation and fireworks. Collins, 87, traces her roots back to Seattle, where she was born. She credits her radio broadcaster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2485323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2485322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Seattle-born-Judy-Collins-talks-PBS-\u2018America-Made-in-Virginia-special.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2485322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2485324,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485322\/revisions\/2485324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2485323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2485322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2485322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2485322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}