It was late winter 1960. I was 11. My father took me with him to lounge on 36th St. and 2nd Avenue, for dinner and his latest discovery, a lounge act who were recently backing up in the studio guys like Sinatra, Dean Martin and others who had turned to ballads. As we entered, the hat check girl told him the act he wanted to introduce me to were fired the night before after one them got in a fist fight with the husband of a woman he had been flirting with, but someone else was sitting in, and she hadn't yet heard. I loved sharing music one on one nights with my dad, strange new places, music I never heard before. We went in, he had a reservation and the food was good.
A very slight, very sexy, young blond girl was sitting at the piano, ethereally slipping into Cole Porter standards, just her and the piano. We were both entranced, and so was the rest of the audience. No one was eating, no one was speaking, everyone was staring at her and listening. Her work on the piano showed more classical training than tin pan alley. Her voice made my bones ache with pleasure. A week later my dad mentioned he had gone back to find when she would be playing the lounge again, he want my mom to hear her. She had not come back for a another booking. It was a one night performance for pocket money. About a year or two later, at my aunt's apartment in the village, someone put this album on my aunt's on her crappy old mono turntable with its old floor standing big box RCA speaker. Everyone stopped what they were doing, a complete rarity as they usually all vied for attention, and listened. It was same voice, no piano, guitar. Everyone started passing around the album cover, and repeatedly I heard "sexy" whispered, then "earthy," then "other worldly."
Despite claims to the contrary, in those days the folk scene was very preoccupied with image, sometime more than the music, definitely more than claims of authenticity. Judy was known as an Earth mother, with Joan Baez as the sultry siren. Later they switched places without either making an effort to do so. It just happened naturally.
For reasons I can't explain, this song and the album of the same name were always my favorite since she recorded the same.
I bought this album for my mom when it came out, told it was from my dad, and our story about her. My dad had recently passed. My mom played this album often till she passed.
A great voice, a great woman.
BTW, the chicken dinner sucked that evening. No excuses, the dinner was at the Astor Culinary Institute, around the corner from Tower Records, up stairs from Astor Wines, one of the best selections in town, then and today.
