Fact #116860

Judy Collins : Mark (Abramson, producer, Elektra Records) and I were starting to put together a new album, which became Whales and Nightingales.

John Haeny (engineer, Elektra Records) : Putting that album together was a magical experience, one of the two best in my career. It was a brilliant record, on all levels, an enormously broad tapestry of music, big classical works, little folk works, esoteric works. I was pretty much responsible for figuring out how to record.

We did some test sessions in studios around town, including Amazing Grace, where we had a whole bunch of folkies with a lot of acoustic guitars, and a big electric organ and basses and drums, and it was a wonderful evening and a musical disaster. Any time Judy tried anything with drums it was an absolute atrocity.

We had also test-recorded some small classical ensembles, in a big studio, and it was my impression that there was no one studio that would suit the various music types.

Judy Collins : Mark and I decided that we were going to go out of the studios, and use sound situations that we thought were uniquely distinctive.

Mark Abramson : I always liked those old days when (Elektra founder) Jac (Holzman) and I recorded in churches, or in any kind of hall that was acoustically right, or even cheap and convenient, like Judson Hall. John and I decided to record Whales And Nightingales all remote, but remote on a grander scale, since now we could afford to.

John Haeny : We decided to pick locations that matched the emotional ambiance of the songs we were recording. Mark and I spent weeks scouting locations. And then recording . . . What a time we had. We recorded out of a converted red truck, with bums, panhandlers and junkies all around us, during a hot steamy New York summer, and it was just the most vibrant experience imaginable.

For Simple Gifts we went to Paul Harris, a keyboard player down in the Village. I had found his loft accidentally. We went to Carnegie Hall for Prothalamium. We recorded Brel's Marieke in the Manhattan Center, the seventh-floor ballroom where Capitol recorded all their great cast albums. We went to the library of a church…

Mark Abramson : We figured that most people would not be conscious of what we were doing, but subconsciously it would have its effect.

Judy Collins : If something is recorded someplace for a reason, then the reason will come through in the recording.

John Haeny : Mark was a film maker at heart, and I always thought of music as a visual medium. So on this album we were moving from room to room, dissolving from one environment to another, like you would if you were montaging a film.

Mark Abramson : In the final product we went to great lengths to actually crossfade from one room to the next. There's no dead air between the tracks, just like Jac's earlier recordings. We let the ambient sound of the place we were in blend into the next one. If you listen with headphones, you can really hear this.

John Haeny : After Jac had introduced us to Dolby we always recorded Judy with noise reduction. Without the tape noise, if you have the proper equipment to listen, at the end of the roar of a cathedral, you'll hear the chairs kind of squeaking as you enter the loft.

Judy Collins : With Amazing Grace, which I had always sung with friends, I said to Mark, "Let's open it up, get a bunch of friends together." Some of the people from the encounter group. My brother. Stacy. Josh and his girl friend. Susan Evans, who played drums for me, still does from time to time. John Cooke, Alistair Cooke's son, who had a fine voice. Not professional singers, just a whole gang of friends, really.

Jac Holzman : People that Judy or Mark knew, mostly white, mature, some music business people, but non-professional voices. And me.

Judy Collins : I said to Mark and John, "Where to record? What's wonderful?" Mark had gone to Columbia and knew about St. Paul's chapel. He and John went up and took a look, and it was ideal, a beautiful, tiny little round-domed stone-tiled cathedral, green tile, with a stained glass window.

Mark Abramson : There was just something about it, a spirit.

Judy Collins : John set us up. For on-site recording, there was nobody better.

Mark Abramson : It was partially the church, and then the way that John miked it, which was with a portable eight-track, a vocal mike tightly on Judy, close microphones, other microphones about sixty feet away, and then another set of microphones all the way to the back of the chapel, and up in the ceiling, that we could play with in the mixing, to get this incredibly full sound. I was so frantic, so afraid that with all these people we were going to screw it up in some way. But it worked.

Jac Holzman : Everyone was grouped at the choir end, like a platoon of voices in a shower, but smoothed out and sounding great. The mood was joyous and affirming.

Mark Abramson : It was almost heavenly, but not choir-like. It doesn't sound like a select choir. It's real down to earth. It was exciting, playing it back in the church, with all of those people, and everybody was just, "Jesus!" Then sitting in the van we had outside, listening to it, I knew we had something hair-raising.

Jac Holzman : I had been so impressed by Hey Jude. To me it was the Sistine Chapel of rock, and if I were in the dumps I would listen to it through headphones. Now there was Amazing Grace. I was overcome by its purity, the sense of redemption in the words and the elegiac simplicity of the melody.

Judy Collins : The rule that never held for me was that you had to have an up-tempo song on an album. Both Sides Now is the closest thing to an up-tempo hit that I've ever had. Send In The Clowns later on was completely out of left field. And Amazing Grace is the farthest away.

Mark Abramson : With every record, there's huge discussion about what the single should be. Jac told me Amazing Grace, and I said, "You're kidding." It was the last thing I would have released as a single. It could have been a tremendous problem, because it was so long…

Jac Holzman : I was considering Amazing Grace as a wild card single when I was further nudged in that direction by Clive Selwood, our label manager in Europe. Elektra was completing a three-year contract with our licensee, Polygram, and Clive was trying to convince them to release Amazing Grace as a Christmas record. Polygram thought the idea a tad far-fetched but at Clive's insistence did release it in mid-November, to massive holiday radio play, and it sold a million in England! The minute we knew the reaction in the UK we moved in the US, releasing the single in less than two days.

Mark Abramson : Amazing Grace certainly had an enormous impact. Far beyond sales. I remember George McGovern, when he was running for president against Nixon … Jac was a McGovern supporter, he had him in the office … McGovern came up to me and said, "I want to thank you for Amazing Grace. It meant so much to me." It was Judy's recording that made that song an anthem for so many people.