Biography
Sill's father, an importer of exotic animals for use in films, and older brother both died in separate incidents when she was young. Her mother subsequently married Tom and Jerry animator Kenneth Muse in 1952.
Sill returned to the West Coast where she encountered Graham Nash and David Crosby and toured with them for a time as their opening act. After some initial interest from Atlantic Records David Geffen offered her a contract with his new Asylum label. She sold her song "Lady-O" to The Turtles. She was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Graham Nash produced the first single for her first album, "Jesus was a Cross Maker", which was released to radio on October 1, 1971. The album Judee Sill soon followed in October 1971. The album featured Sill's voice in multiple overdubs, often in a four-part chorale or fugue. She worked with engineer Henry Lewy.
Sill recorded her second and last album, Heart Food. Sill took over orchestrating and arranging Heart Food which included "The Donor".
Following a series of car accidents and failed surgery to rectify a painful back injury, Sill struggled with drug addiction and dropped out of the music scene, finally dying of a drug overdose, or "acute cocaine and codeine intoxication," on November 23, 1979, at her apartment on Morrison Street in North Hollywood. Sill's ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean following a ceremony organised by a few close friends at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Pacific Palisades.
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