1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 29. Joan Baez – Joan Baez (1960)


There’s no mistaking Baez’s distinctive soprano (although at times on this recording she belted out notes so high and loud it made the whole ear-bud experience a bit of an exercise in endurance). 

Baez is known as both a folk singer and activist, although on this album she’s entirely in folk, rather than protest song, mode, covering what I think are mostly traditional songs. Notable is Silver Dagger, which tells the story given by The Louvin Brothers in Katy Dear from the woman’s point of view. Baez’s version is truncated. All we get are the first few verses that tell of the mother advising her daughter not to run off with the man, and how her father has a “chain” of broken hearts. We leave off the bit where the father hunts down and kills the suitor and are left to surmise that perhaps in this telling the young girl heeds the advice of her mother (and thus the body count is significantly lower). 

There’s yet another version of House of the Rising Sun as well, which still isn't The Animals version.

The rest, some Scottish songs, some Americana, a bit of Spanish. Murder ballads, besmirched maidens, wayward boys driven to a life of crime or roving. You know the drill. Aren’t there any happy folk songs? (Answer yes, they’re usually bawdy ones set a-walking on May morning). Baez sets out her stall and does what she’s good at. And this sounds somehow much more 1960s compared to the earlier folky albums in this series, even though the songs are similar and they’re only recorded a few years apart. Maybe because I can hear Baez singing Dylan songs first and foremost, I don’t know. 

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