• Writer: Stephen Stills
• Producers: Crosby, Stills & Nash
• Recorded: Early 1969 at Wally Heider’s Studio III in Los Angeles, Calif.
• Released: May 29, 1969
• Players:
  Stephen Stills — vocals, acoustic guitars, bass, organ, percussion
  David Crosby — vocals
  Graham Nash — vocals
• Album: Crosby, Stills & Nash (Atlantic, 1969)
• Also on:
  Woodstock (Atlantic, 1970)
  4 Way Street (Atlantic, 1971)
  So Far (Atlantic, 1974)
  Crosby, Stills & Nash (box set) (Atlantic, 1991)
  Woodstock: The 25th Anniversary Collection (Atlantic, 1994)
• One of rock’s first “supergroups,” the trio was formed in 1968 after Stephen Stills left Buffalo Springfield and David Crosby left the Byrds, while Graham Nash was planning to leave the Hollies.
• Crosby and Nash were originally introduced by Mama Cass Elliott in 1966.
• CSN wrote and rehearsed for its first album in London.
• Nash officially left the Hollies during these rehearsals, playing a charity concert with them on December 8th, 1968 at the London Palladium.
• Although Crosby and Nash were personal friends of the Beatles, Crosby, Stills, & Nash were rejected by the Apple Records in 1968.
• During January 1969, the trio moved its rehearsals to John Sebastian’s house on Long Island.
• The group’s legendary appearance at the first Woodstock festival was only its second live performance (they was joined by future bandmate Neil Young).
• “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” was written for singer Judy Collins, Stills’ girlfriend at the time.
• Stills’ comments on the song: “It started out as a long narrative poem about my relationship with Judy Collins. It poured out of me over many months and filled several notebooks. I had a hell of a time getting the music to fit. I was left with all these pieces of song and I said ‘Let’s sing them together and call it a suite,’ because they were all about the same thing and they led up to the same point.”
• Stills’ says the song’s Cuban-flavored coda was included “just to liven it up because it had gone on forever and I didn’t want it to just fall apart. I said ‘Now that we’ve sung all these lyrics about one thing, let’s change the subject entirely.’ And we did. Even did it in a different language just to make sure that nobody could understand it.”
• Released as a single in the fall of 1969, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” peaked at Number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
• The Crosby, Stills & Nash album peaked at Number 6 on the Billboard Top 200 chart and has sold more than two million copies.
• The version of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” that appeared on the 1991 Crosby, Stills & Nash box set, is a slightly alternate mix, which included a drum track by Stills which was left on the cutting room floor in 1969.

FAST FORWARD:

• Crosby, Stills & Nash — with and without Young — have recorded and toured off-and-on since their inception.
• The trio has the distinction of being one of a handful of acts to perform at two Woodstock festivals, in 1969 and again in 1994.
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited on March 31, 1990 for a benefit concert for drummer Dallas Taylor, who was in need of a liver transplant, which he received the following month. Taylor joined the group on “Wooden Ships.”
• Crosby has survived debilitating drug addictions that resulted in a short imprisonment during 1986. He underwent a liver transplant in 1994.
• In 1997, Stills became the first musician inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice on the same night — with Buffalo Springfield and with CSN.