Judy Collins

Judy Collins claims Colorado as her home state, as her family moved from Seattle to Denver in 1949, when she was 10. Her father was a singer, composer and broadcasting personality, and she appeared as a youngster on his KOA radio program, Chuck Collins Calling. Shortly after arriving in Colorado, Collins began the study of classical piano with Dr. Antonia Brico, a conductor and pianist who devoted her life to fighting prejudice against women in the orchestral world, and she debuted with the Denver Businessmen’s Orchestra when she was just a teenager.

By the time she was a student at Denver’s East High School, Collins had traded the classical piano for a secondhand guitar, a gift from her father. Turning to folk music, she combined her father’s love of popular Irish tunes with the influence of Lingo the Drifter (T.D. Lingo), an enigmatic Lookout Mountain resident who taught her the songs of Woody Guthrie and Josh White. At 20, the new mother and wife won an audition for a job at Michael’s Pub in Boulder, earning $100 a week plus pizza and 3.2 beer. She launched her singing career performing at the Satire Lounge and the Green Spider, as well as various mountain bistros such as the Gilded Garter in Central City and the Limelite in Aspen. The Exodus was Denver’s focal point for local Beats, artists, poets and a sprinkling of button-down college kids; Collins and folksinger Walt Conley were asked to be opening acts, and they were featured on the Folk Festival at the Exodus LP.