A couple of years ago, Rolling Stone ran a story with the title “10 Folk Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You Never Heard.” Among the 10 is one by Judee Sill called Heart Food, released in 1973.
Judith Lynne Sill (October 7, 1944 – November 23, 1979) lived what was surely a very troubled life, and died young. The second heading of her Wikipedia entry is “Early Life and Troubles,” with troubles that include armed robbery, drug abuse, and the early death of her father, mother and a brother, ending when she died of a drug overdose, possibly suicide at the age of 35. The full Wikepedia piece is worth a read if you want to be sad.
She was an American singer/songwriter, notably the first artist signed to David Geffen‘s Asylum label. She put out a couple of albums on Asylum and was working on a third at the time of her death. Her first album was released in late 1971 and was followed a year and a half later by Heart Food. In a review at the time in Rolling Stone, Stephen Holden wrote this (May 24, 1973):
The goal of Sill’s spiritual quest is absolute oneness with God, a fusion that is conceived both as psychedelic pantheism and in primitive, Judeo-Christian terms. The language with which Sill has chosen to express her vision is quite unusual and powerful. Her diction is elevated, at times almost Biblical, at others idiomatic… Judee Sill is a most gifted artist, one who continues to promise almost more than I dare hope for.”
At AllMusic, Alex Stimmel writes that
The album doesn’t suffer much from its sometimes syrupy exterior, though — the songs are almost as strong as any of those from her debut. To wit, Heart Food suffers only in comparison to its predecessor; otherwise, it’s a stellar example of the kind of singer/songwriter fare the music industry was mining in the early ’70s.
Though she did not have any significant commercial success in her time, a number of important artists have noticed her work and recorded some of it including Liz Phair, Warren Zevon, and Shawn Colvin. That fact should not surprise.
This album is absolutely worth a listen. There is something about the recording technique/quality of the time that is somewhat muddy, perhaps syrupy, and off-putting, but that’s true of much of the work of the period. What strikes me most is that Judee Sill is so much a product of the early seventies in music, particular as one might situate it in the folk-rock genre. “The Kiss” sounds like something Seals and Crofts would do, “The Pearl” perhaps Pure Prairie League with strings and banjo, others like “Down Where the Valley’s Are Low” and “The Vigilante” with a spiritual, bluesy, steel string guitar vibe signalling where folk rock and country started to come together.
By the way, the final tune, called “The Jig” sounds like Aaron Copeland on acid, for what it’s worth. Not sure what was going on there.
Unique to Judee Sill are a vocal delivery and lyrics that evoke the vulnerability and sadness that characterized so much of her life. The cut below, my favourite on the album, would not sound out of place with much of the newer work featured on a web radio station like Folk Alley. This album is indeed a lost gem.
It does occur to me that Judee Sill was writing and performing the kind of music that made the Eagles, Pure Prairie League, Seals and Crofts, Jackson Browne, etc. rich and famous, and yet she didn’t make it. Could it be that this style of music was too much a guy thing for her to break through?