It's New to Me: Judee Sill by Judy Sill (1971)

Photo of a "moussaka" from James Beard's Homemaking with a Flair, Winter 1973

Judee Sill came more or less out of nowhere in 1971, the first release on a brand new label (David Geffen's Asylum Records). The record cover was a simple profile of portrait of Sill, obscured by her long hair except for a beaky nose, dark glasses and a cross pendant. A former junkie with a prodigious talent and a very sketchy background, Sill's songs were, at first blush, simple religious folk with a surprising classical influence. Based on either her plucked acoustic guitar lines or piano melodies, the songs were bolstered with some nice production touches like strings and horns. The album flopped, in spite of support from well-known musicians like Graham Nash and, after a second album in 1973, Sill turned back to drugs and passed away at the age of 35.

I kind of thought that Judee Sill would be up my alley, but I was still surprised with how quickly I took to this album. The songs are just so pleasing and accessible - her voice and lyrics elevate them above other early-70s folk for me. Her vibrato-less soprano has a very distinctive twang - she has a natural way of phrasing that makes her singing very appealing. And I think that knowing her background makes her songs more interesting as well. You can see all the stages of Sill's troubled life in her lyrics - the redemptive themes of her then-recent religious awakening battle against darker metaphysical images from her troubled years and the exaggerated whimsy of a lost childhood.

The Graham-Nash-produced single "Jesus Was a Cross-Maker" is a stand-out track on Judee Sill, obviously, and her "Lady-O" is known to many because it was covered by the Turtles. But the song on the record that is the most "Judee Sill" to me is "Crayon Angels". It starts with a simple acoustic picking and folky melody backed by a single oboe, and her distinctive mix of imagery comes across immediately in the lyrics. Her talent for phrasing comes through in the second verse, particularly in the way she pronounces, "The Angels come back and laugh." Because of Sill's recent popularity among the new-folk set, some people have declared her to have gone straight from under-rated to over-rated, but you'd be missing out if you dismissed this album on that basis - there's a lot to enjoy in Judee Sill.

"Crayon Angels" by Judee Sill