Judith Sims

From the beginning of her journalism career, Judith Sims was in a unique position. In 1964, Capitol Records created The Teen Set, a teen focused promotional tool exclusively featuring Capitol artists. By 1965, after two successful issues, Capitol decided to establish TeenSet as a monthly magazine which was no longer exclusive to their artists. With this new venture, Capitol also released control of the magazine to the Kimtex corporation, where music-loving Judith Sims was employed as a secretary. At 25 years-old and with little-to-no experience in journalism (beyond contributing to staff reports in her college newspaper), Sims was handed the editorial reins of TeenSet.

Throughout her term with TeenSet, there was little input from Capitol and infrequent oversight from the various publishers, leaving Sims to include musicians and cultural events which piqued her interest. This editorial role enabled a deep involvement in popular music and cultural scenes allowing her to frequent Hollywood's Sunset Strip, rub elbows with many preeminent figures and musicians such as, Derek Taylor, Photographer Jim Marshall, Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, and the Beach Boys. Her intimate coverage of the Beatles is especially of note. In 1966, she joined the Beatles for their U.S. tour, and in 1967, she spent time in EMI's Abbey Road Studio Two during the recording of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band. Sims reported first-hand what was happening on the 1960s fading Hollywood and the blossoming San Francisco Scenes, and consistently featured the Swinging London Scene contributed by Carol Gold. Her reporting of popular music and culture was cutting-edge, including early features of many up-and-coming musicians such as Buffalo Springfield (a personal favorite of Sims) and a full 16-page photo spread (by Jim Marshall and Bruce McBroom) of the Monterey Pop Festival. Ultimately, with TeenSet, Sims navigated a changing musical landscape of the mid-to-late 1960s, and, as the editor, Judith Sims became a pioneering popular music journalist.

During her tenure at TeenSet and into the mid-1970s, Sims moonlighted for the British publication, Disc and Music Echo (later Disc) magazine. After the collapse of TeenSet (renamed AUM for the final three issues) in 1969, Sims was recruited by colleague Ben Fong-Torres to write for Rolling Stone. She wrote many articles for Rolling Stone considering Hendrix, the Beatles, the Who, Tim Buckley, and more. By the 1980s, Sims wrote for The Times, Washington Post, collaborated on small one-off teen publications, and in the 1990s, worked as assistant editor of the L.A. Times before she died of cancer in 1996. Sims was, and historically is, a force to be reckoned with in popular music journalism, but she is often overlooked. Although more recently, Sims and TeenSet have been briefly considered by Richard Morton Jack, Don Armstrong, and, most notably, past Rolling Stone editor Chet Flippo, in general, her role and impact is lacking from the broad popular music discourse. However, Sims, and TeenSet, is currently the focus of an upcoming academic book, and past British PhD thesis, both by Allison Bumsted, in which Sims is refocused as an invaluable contributor to 1960s culture and popular music journalism.

Biography Contributed by Allison Bumsted