Judy Henske
Imposing beatnik queen of the 1960s BORN 1936
“There are three types of singer: male, female and banjo-playing chick,” announced Judy Henske. Tall (6’, 1”), with a deep, strident voice and wild unkempt hair, and with just a few songs in her repertoire – which required her to be funny to pad the time – she was a beatnik curiosity in the LA jazz clubs and coffee houses she unsettled as the 1960s dawned. Following a stint with the Whiskeyhill Singers in 1961, and a lauded TV appearance with Judy Garland, she signed with Elektra in 1962. The label styled her as a cocktail singer in the Julie London mould, which didn’t suit her voice or personality, both of which remained unfettered. Moving to New York, she briefly became a folk world sensation, appearing on the cover of Time and in Greenwich Village with Bob Dylan and Woody Allen, who’s said to have based Annie Hall on her.
Her performing style influenced Bette Midler, Mama Cass and Carly Simon, but didn’t sell records, and Elektra let her go. After marrying her stage sidekick, Jerry Yester of The Lovin’ Spoonful, her career faltered. A bold 1966 live recording, produced by Jack Nitzsche, featuring folk chestnuts, soul songs and surreal monologues, captured her uncategorisable persona but flopped. In 1969, she made an album with Yester, Farewell Aldebaran, an arresting psychedelic gumbo too strange for mass consumption. When their subsequent band Rosebud failed, they divorced in 1971 and Henske married band colleague Craig Doerge. The couple lived and worked together for many years in Pasadena, California, releasing Loose In The World (1999) and She Sang California (2004). Henske was working on a memoir at the time of her death.