Junk Box Jury

America’s most exciting folk singer (Saga Records EROS 8075) 1968

Joan Baez | The Best Of | (Saga) | This historic recording will find a permanent place in the annals of American folk music. It is, in fact, the first, original recording ever made by the incomparable Joan Baez.

In the spring of 1959, the sound of the folk song revival was being heard everywhere. In and around Boston and Harvard Square it was no different. New young talent was being heard for the first time. It was under these circumstances that Joan Baez, who was then attending Boston University, was first recognized as an exciting new voice.

Joan Baez stopped the show and was singled out for praise by the New York Times for her high spirited impromptu performance at the Newport Folksong Festival of 1959, when folk song star Bob Gibson invited her up from the audience to join him on stage. Joan fulfilled her first important professional engagement at the folksingers’ Mecca, The Gate of Horn in Chicago in 1959. She was eighteen at the time.

In November, 1962, Joan Baez was the subject of a Time magazine cover story. As Time put it, “folk singing is a religion, in the purists’ lexicon, and the big corporate trios are its money-changing DeMilles. The high pantheon is made up of all the shiftless geniuses who have shouted the songs of their forbearers into tape recorders provided by the Library of Congress. These country “authentics” are all but unapproachable gods. The tangible sibyl, closer to hand, is Joan Baez.

Her voice is as clear as air in autumn, a vibrant, strong, untrained and thrilling soprano. She wears no make-up, and her long black hair hangs like a drapery, parted around her long almond face. In performance she comes on, walks straight to the microphone, and begins to sing. No patter. No show business.

Joan Baez | The Best Of | (Saga)

She usually wears a sweater and skirt or simple dress. Occasionally she affects something semi-Oriental that seems to have been hand-sewn out of burlap. The purity of her voice suggests purity of approach. She is only 21 and palpably nubile. But there is little sex in that clear flow of sound.

It is haunted and plaintive, a mother’s voice, and it has in it distant reminders of black women wailing in the night, of detached madrigal singers performing calmly at court, and of saddened gypsies trying to charm death into leaving their Spanish caves.

Impresarios everywhere are trying to book her. She has rarely appeared in night clubs and says she doubts that she will ever sing in one again; she wants to be something more than background noise. Her LP albums sell so well that she could hugely enrich herself by recording many more, but she has set a limit of one a year.

Most of her concerts are given on college campuses.”**

Joan Baez is an undeniably great talent who has, since her early engagements and this first recording, gone on to write a spectacular new page in the history of folk music. It is for this reason that this album holds such historic meaning and belongs in our folk music archives as an important part of our folk heritage.

Joan Baez | The Best Of | (Saga)

BILL WOOD
Bill Wood graduated Harvard in 1959. A collector of American and European folk songs, he made many concert appearances in the Boston area during his years at Harvard, including a number jointly with Joan Baez. He also appeared regularly with the Raunch Hands, a talented undergraduate singing group which he organized and led. Bill’s home is Baltimore, Md., but he is a native of Missouri.

TED ALEVIZOS
Ted Alevizos is a noted collector of folk songs, known especially for his recording of Greek folk songs. As Assistant Chief of Circulation and Stacks at Widener Library, Harvard, he has at his disposal for research, one of the finest folklore and folksong collections in the country.

A graduate of Marquette and Columbia Universities, Ted also studied at the Julliard School of Music as a special student in voice. In addition to concert appearances, he has performed at Storyville and the Ballad Room in Boston. His radio appearances included the Oscar Brand Show, the Manny Greenhill programme and the Harvard Radio Station Folk Music programme.

**Time Magazine.

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cost of record: 50 pence
from: Charity Shop