Artist profile: Judith Durham of The Seekers

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If you’re a musician, and you want to do your ears a favor, listen to someone with perfect pitch. It reorients your ears. Listening to perfect pitch heals the ears after amplified music, and playing for long periods of time.

Perfect pitch is the real notes. Every note has a core sound, and people with perfect pitch hit that core. There’s not many people who have it, and fewer who know what to do with it.

The thing that initially blew everybody away about The Seekers was Judith’s voice. That includes the band. Another of the breed of half pint vocal volcanoes, Judith has far more power in her voice than most rock singers.

You could call it “soul” easily enough.

The Seekers’ version of Turn! Turn! Turn! Is a lesson in vocal control and arrangement.

So in the mid 60s Australia found itself confronted with a girl surrounded by three guys who looked like giants compared to her, and a long series of hit songs which became instant hits quite literally because everybody loved them.

They hit the world just as hard. “I’ll Never Find Another You” kept “My Generation” at Number 2, in England. “Georgy Girl” was a US Number One. Real music will always penetrate with music lovers.

The joke was that in the middle of the “Rock Revolution”, songs that were just plain good songs were beating the hype.

The Seekers albums remain classic lessons in acoustic recording. The original vinyl version of A World Of Our Own is so accurate you can hear the winding on the strings. It’s excellent recording, and it’s done with dub technology. Not easy, and the sound quality is extraordinary.

In terms of material, they did standards, originals, and Tom Springfield’s classics. Perhaps a bit “over-folked” in some respects, they also got one of Paul Simon’s best songs, “Some Day One Day” which is as much pure joy as you could possibly expect to fit onto a song lasting 2:36 minutes.

The Voice, meanwhile, was doing things with range that a violin would think twice about. “The Carnival Is Over” is a song which is below her normal keys, and she sails through it like a clipper ship on a strong wind.

The Seekers’ version of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” is a real vocal experience. The “violin” comment holds true. Her voice is exactly like a violin, hitting the notes like a good Maggini.

Post Seekers, Judith’s career waxed and waned and waxed again, but the popularity never went away.

Seekers fans and Judith Durham fans don’t reform.

The list of gaping-jawed, mindblown praise from other musicians over the last 40 years, (of which this article is yet another), has been well earned.

Typical of Australian artists, “promotion” isn’t exactly the name of the game. Websites aren’t common, nor are sound bytes. This is the best of the websites an independent fan site, which unlike the others has multimedia and lots of links. The DVDs The Seekers Down Under and The Seekers At Home, some stills from which are on the site, are the best indication of The Seekers’ style.

For the record, check out the photography. In some shots she's nearly as beautiful as her voice, and in others you can see what a strong case there is for giving guide dogs to photographers.

The Seekers reformed in the 90s, after a nearly 30 year standing joke with the rest of Australia about when they were going to reform. Bruce Woodley, the Seekers’ most regular songwriter, came up with a song called “I am Australian”. Judith sang a version of it.

(Like many Seekers songs it’s now part of the country).

A couple of years ago I heard a sound byte of the song on TV, which was on a news broadcast from the Easter Show, a big family outing for the city and country people.

The sound was way up, and you could have cut diamonds with her voice. That kind of clarity,at that volume, is more than rare. High volume tends to expose weaknesses in vocals. The only person I know who regularly recorded at high volume was Elvis. Not many singers can do it, and almost none can do it well.

Some people sing songs. Others sing to the world.

The world’s a better place because they do.