{"id":807906,"date":"2020-05-29T08:18:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T14:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=1006566"},"modified":"2020-05-29T08:18:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T14:18:57","slug":"judy-collins-on-rereleasing-amazing-grace-life-in-quarantine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/judy-collins-on-rereleasing-amazing-grace-life-in-quarantine\/","title":{"rendered":"Judy Collins on Rereleasing \u2018Amazing Grace,\u2019 Life in Quarantine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Judy Collins<\/a>\u2019 iconic rendition of \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d was released on 1970\u2019s Whales & Nightingales<\/em>, an album that turns 50 in August. But Collins initially performed the hymn many years before that, during the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964 and at the height of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Now, the legendary singer has decided to rerelease the song, backed by a choir of singers across the globe. Listeners can also join the Global Virtual Choir<\/a> to sing the song with Collins. All proceeds from the single will be donated to the World Health Organization Solidarity Response Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From her Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, Collins hopped on the phone with Rolling Stone<\/em> to discuss the single, its historical significance, and what she\u2019s been up to in quarantine.<\/p>\n

How have you been doing in quarantine?<\/strong>
Lucky to be in a beautiful place with all my books and toys and cats and husband, so it\u2019s not as bad as it might be. Besides that, we take a walk every three or four days \u2014 masks, gloves \u2014 and go to the park when there are not so many people there.<\/p>\n

How are your cats doing? Are they confused at you being home all the time? <\/strong>
[Laughs]<\/em> Sort of. They\u2019re so happy. We\u2019re enjoying being at home. I\u2019ve tried for years to figure out a way to get two months off in the summer. I\u2019ve never been able to do it.<\/p>\n

Tell me how you originally decided to record \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d<\/strong>
I was in Mississippi with Fannie Lou [Hamer] in 1964, going around in different towns. She sang \u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d a song my grandmother had sung to me when I was little. I made the connection with freedom and the anti-war movement.<\/p>\n

So in 1969, I was in an encounter group in New York that I had started with the guy who had started Phoenix House [Mitchell Rosenthal]. My producer was in that group with me, and one night he said to me, \u201cI think you should sing something because everybody is very upset.\u201d So I sang \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d I figured by that time many people knew about it. I sang it, and everybody calmed down.<\/p>\n

The next day, he called me and said, \u201cI think we should record that.\u201d We wound up going to St. Paul\u2019s [Chapel] on the campus of Columbia University. A beautiful little cathedral with incredible sound, and that\u2019s where we recorded it. It became a huge hit.<\/p>\n

What made you decide to rerelease it? <\/strong>
I figured that this song is something that can be very healing for people to hear and sing. I said, \u201cLet\u2019s try to raise money for the World Health Organization.\u201d I made 30 videos for 30 different countries around the world inviting people to come and sing in the choir.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazing Grace\u201d is hundreds of years old. What makes it so timeless?<\/strong>
It\u2019s been 50 years since I\u2019ve been, quite often, ending my shows with \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d I didn\u2019t know where it came from in the first place. I had no idea that it was written by this guy [John Newton] who was an Englishman who was a slave-trading captain. [He] had a religious experience when his ship wrecked and he was saved, and he wrote this song. He became the inspiration for William Wilberforce, who finally got the bill passed in England to stop the slave trade.<\/p>\n

When I was singing this song before I knew where it came from, I just understood that it was powerful. But after I found out John Newton\u2019s history, I thought to myself, \u201cThere\u2019s an even deeper reason for this.\u201d Because this came out of a spiritual transformation that Newton experienced. From being a really terrible person, he changed his life and decided to devote himself to doing things that were going to be healing. That\u2019s got to be part of that song\u2019s power. It\u2019s got to be.<\/p>\n