Music Legends - Featured Artist Joan Baez

A legend in her own right, Joan Baez, activist, songwriter and musician Baez has been a musical influence for the last 55 years, ever since her first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959.

Born at Staten Island New York on 09 January 1941, Joan Baez made her musical debut at the Newport Folk Festival, and recorded her first album titled simply Joan Baez in 1960 on the Vanguard label. A mesmerising voice, reaching pitches that most opera singers would be very happy to emulate, she uses her music to support popular causes, usually anti-establishment

From the webpage Joanbaez.Com

Joan Baez. A musical force of nature - who unselfconsciously introduced Bob Dylan to the world in 1963, marched on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement with Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired Vaclav Havel to fight for a Czech Republic, and sang on the first Amnesty International tour. She brought the Free Speech Movement into the spotlight at Berkeley, took to the fields with Cesar Chavez, organized resistance to the war in Southeast Asia, then forty years later saluted the Dixie Chicks for their courage to protest war.
Joan's earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into 1960s rock. She quickly began to focus awareness on songwriters ranging from Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Phil Ochs, Richard Fariña, and Tim Hardin, to Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury, to Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, Steve Earle, and many more (including herself).

So to the music we go…. Starting off with her pre-Animals version of House of the Rising recorded in 1960. To my mind (and ear) she was still tempering her voice.

Although a songwriter herself, Joan usually chose to interpret other artists composition’s, having one of her biggest hits with The Bands number The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

Again, from Joanbaez.com …bear with me as I cannot describe so eloquently a woman I have looked up to since my early teens ..as expressed here

At a point when it was neither safe nor fashionable, Joan put herself on the line countless times, as her life's work was mirrored in her music. She sang about freedom and Civil Rights everywhere, from the backs of flatbed trucks in Mississippi to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963. In 1964, she withheld 60% of her income tax from the IRS to protest military spending, and participated in the birth of the Free Speech movement at UC Berkeley. A year later she co-founded the Institute For The Study Of Nonviolence near her home in Carmel Valley. In 1966, she stood in the fields alongside Cesar Chavez and migrant farm workers striking for fair wages, and opposed capital punishment at San Quentin during a Christmas vigil.

The soundtrack for the tumultuous '60s was (and still is) Joan's remarkably timeless Vanguard albums

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda …. An anti-war song …

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Joan Baez is still recording, and still protesting… 55 years on… here is her biggest hit, penned by herself, supposedly aimed at Bob Dylan…. Thank you Bob for inspiring such a marvellous composition.

Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words

It appears that 40 years on the Nobel Literature Committee agreed {grin}

Now some self-indulgence, some of what I feel are her best songs, starting with Please Come to Boston, and then Swing Low Sweet Chariot…performed without any musical accompaniment …give them a listen

For those who do not know her music, I hope I have awakened some interest.
Credits:
http://www.joanbaez.com/officialbio08.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez
http://www.azlyrics.com/j/joanbaez.html
Thank you for listening…. It brought me good memories!!

I am featuring artists from the 60’s and 70’s from diverse genre’s over the next few months. If you love music … FOLLOW and take the journey with me..it is going to be one thrilling ride !! Furthermore I will only be featuring artists from MY vinyl collection, and I shall start all of the posts with a photo of an album cover to authenticate

Previous Music Legends
Leonard Cohen
The Doors
Bob Dylan
The Rolling Stones
60’s Protest Artists
Janis Joplin
jimi Hendrix
Neil Young
And More …… to be found here