"Dear Bobby," Judy Collins writes inside the packaging of her new album. "This is a love letter to you, who called to me from the precipice, you with your wild hair and your thin bones and your silver-tipped black boots, a figure of my imagination, a fact of my life."
Dylan is like that for a host of Americans: an enigmatic but sharing poet whose seen-it-all commentary and folk- and blues-fused melodies have been a fact of life for more than 30 years. But to Collins, Dylan is a friend from way, way back, and many of the 11 songs in this collection reflect a mutual life and times.Collins and Dylan have known one another since the late 1950s, when both were budding - and teenage - singers. She's dipped into his vast repertoire occasionally through the years, lending her pure voice to songs like "Masters of War," "Tom Thumb's Blues" and "I'll Keep It With Mine," "which," she writes, "you said you wrote for me."
Collins returned to Dylan's songs in a time of pain and soul-searching, and the result in places is so right, so luminescent that "Just Like a Woman" takes a place among the most appealing albums of her career.
"Dark Eyes," with just Judy and a piano in an arrangement of early-Randy Newman simplicity, is an unaffected work of art. She emphasizes unwavering faith in a lovely "I Believe in You," one of those songs that can be heard as a tribute to someone admired or to God. "With God on Our Side," sung in overdubbed two-part harmony by Collins with no accompaniment whatsoever, hits hard and unforgettably; even the overtaxed break in her otherwise steady voice at the end seems, upon reflection, contextually appropriate.
A few of the songs are like transplants straight from the '60s. The opening "Like a Rolling Stone" has the jangly guitar and folk-rock feel of that era, with her cool vocals in counterpoint. In a few cases one can legitimately wonder if Collins is an ideal choice for interpreter (even the title song raises the question), but multiple listenings temper most doubts. She turns "Sweet-heart Like You" - which has a patently male point of view - into a story being told, both spoken and sung. "Gotta Serve Somebody" features gospel-style backup singers, which isn't exactly a Judy Collins sort of setting, and she even keeps a verse listing Dylan's various names and nick-names.
Yet rarely have Dylan songs been given a better display by a single performer. Collins' high, clear delivery and the generally just-right arrangements emphasize the imagery and poetry of a great generational spokesman.
Collins concludes with "Dylan's Dream," and the nostalgic, memory-laden tune about long-lost friends and departed days wraps things up perfectly. On a train ride, Dylan dreams and Collins sings:
With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin' and singin' 'till the early hours of the morn. . . .
Oh I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat -
I'd give it gladly if our lives could be like that.