Singer-songwriter Judy Henske, perhaps best known as part of the folk music scene in Greenwich Village in the early 1960's, passed away on April 27th after a lengthy illness. She was 85.
Although Henske recorded several albums and musically collaborated with then husband Jerry Yester of The Lovin' Spoonful she was not well known outside the Greenwich Village folk music scene having largely withdrawn from the music business in the early 1970's to raise her daughter. Henske, however, did continue to write songs and eventually returned to performing during the 1990's.
I first learned about Henske through Richie Havens when I attended his concerts in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Havens spoke of his experiences in the Greenwich Village folk music scene and, in particular, spoke reverently about a tall woman with dark hair and a black dress who sang 10 Bob Dylan ballads in a row. The first couple of times I heard him tell the story, he did not mention who he was speaking of until one night several audience members asked him to reveal this mystery woman.
The other reason I know about Henske is because she made fun of a lyric in Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren". Henske laughed at the line, "I'm as puzzled as the oyster". Sensitive to her criticism, Buckley stopped performing the song until he rewrote the line as, "I'm as puzzled as the newborn child." On a personal note, when I was writing poetry in the early 2000's, I titled my first chapbook Oysters and the Newborn Child: Melancholy and Dead Musicians. I suppose I would have never selected that title if not for Henske.
Judy Henske possessed a deep powerful voice which she controlled impeccably as demonstrated by her performance of "Wade in the Water" from the 1963 film Hootenany Hoot which featured the likes of Johnny Cash and George Hamilton IV. If you listen to it you can understand why Richie Havens was so mesmerized by her. R.I.P.
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