Joan Baez

“Joan Baez” by Joan Baez (1960) I don’t know what you were doing in 1960, but with this album, Joan Baez was launching her career as a folk icon. Actually, she wasn’t. She was simply singing beautiful traditional folk ballads and laments with her inimitable voice and deftly executed acoustic stylings. Her ‘career’ was simply the loving conversation that the world had with her musical magic. This recording is both tasteful and tasty in its simplicity, its resonance, and its depth. Her lyrics, melodies, and chord structures are all, of course, features of well-selected traditional folk songs (Her songwriting would come later). But it’s what she did with these songs that yanked on the heartstrings of millions—and still does. Vocally, her characteristic rapid vibrato over an equally characteristic sonorous timbre wrings every drop of passion out of the poetry. When she attacks the melody in her upper register, she freezes the listener in his tracks, like the ears of a deer caught in the headlights. Her dynamic variation is frightening—going from soft and sweet to a powerful wail in the space of a skipped heartbeat. Accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, she chooses and performs fingerings and fills that are perfectly suited to each composition. Beginning guitarists would be well advised to listen to her, learn, practice, and aspire—in that order. This was Joan Baez’ first album. Most tracks were recorded in one take, with voice and guitar together. No dubbing. No effects. No frills. Folks, this is as pure as folk music gets. 5/5

i don’t hate it but it’s boring as fuck

Unlistenable. This sounds like Woodstock and the Renaissance Fair had a baby.

Well, looks like I've fallen in love with a voice again. Joan, you have my heart. Don't tell my wife.

This was a very nice folk album with such a clear and clean sound. I enjoyed how the guitar feels like it's just there to enhance her voice.

I just have never enjoyed her fluttery voice. Not my style.

Beautiful in its simplicity is something I've said on previous albums but this is another perfect example. Folk that I can get behind. Nothing more beautiful than a person and their guitar. Great cover of House of the Rising Sun.

Joan does some good stuff with these songs, but I do find 30+ minutes of her warbling away a little testing.

I know what they are trying to do and I think they are doing it well. I just am not a fan.

I thought this was going to be perfect listening for a slightly hungover Sunday morning but her voice is far too shrill for my tastes, I only made it halfway through.

Such a beautiful first album from the goddess of folk. Totally forgot that House Of The Rising Son was on her debut. Hard not to get emotional on All My Trials or Girl Of Constant Sorrow, and have some peyote and run around like a kid in the fields of Walnut Grove as school lets out on Wildwood Flower. I would have loved to be on the hillside listening in at Woodstock when she was 6 months pregnant and missing her husband who was in a Texas prison for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. There is a reason that a passion for folk songwriting is in my soul, and I know that Joan had something to do with it. Tip of the hat to present era folk troubadours like Colin Meloy who continue to water the flowers that Baez planted.

Joan's voice is incredibly clear and bright. The album is mastered so well for something as old as it is. This is gorgeous, very stripped folk music that highlights an incredible voice.

not really my taste in music. the singing was very high pitched and light and airy with a thin backing track. not really what i like

Look, no.

Baez isn't, and has never been, my kind of thing. She's too earnest.

Not as unpleasant as I feared.

this is one of those albums that are too good to rate I can’t tell you how much I love this kind of folksy music the vocals, the guitar, those nice melodies, it all comes together to create a beautiful, warm atmosphere it reminds me a lot of Vashti Bunyan’s album Just Another Diamond Day (one of my favorite albums ever) I would love to find more albums with this kind of sound Cottage Songs by Naomi Lewis is a pretty nice album, but the genre is a little too different, it still sounds incredible and I love that album, but it could use a little more one on one with her voice and some warm guitar anyway, this album is just too special for me to give a simple 10/10 I really need more music like this

Stunning iconic voice

Beautiful songs

What a beautiful voice! As if a mockingbird could speak English! Amazing!!!! Just not my bag. I bump up to push to 3 for voice alone.

I think I heard her for the first time in high school and thought she had such a beautiful voice. This is the first album I've listened to of hers, and that still holds up, but it can get to be a bit much for song after song, particularly some of the shriller notes. I also don't understand why there were so many songs about historical figures.

Very much of its time, folk standards sung with her distinctive voice. Not my thing

Annoying

My momma said if I don’t have anything nice to say I shouldn’t say nothing.......sorry mom. Joan is a talented lady no doubt - but This was painful to listen to. Nails on a chalkboard bad.

Lovely and haunting, spare and magnificent.

Very calm and relaxing. Every song sounds like it should be in a Disney movie.

I never gave Joan a fair chance, but I get it now. She’s great. This was a wonderful recording of old folks tunes. I like her voice and the arrangements.

I’m convinced she dated bob dylan just to show everyone how she clears him in many categories (multi-lingual, sane)

Very pleasantly surprised.

We are far removed from the context in which this set of dutiful, pretty and somewhat ordinary standards slayed faces. Her voice has force, though the loud parts feel like being next to a car doing donuts in a mall parking lot. “Dona Dona” sounds best to me.

This was pleasant enough to listen to, but it was a bit dull. Found myself wanting to nod off for the most part but then every now and then Joan would screech out a note and it would bring me back around to realising that this isn't my thing.

Joan Baez by Joan Baez. Reminds me of very early Disney music, where the women sings as high pitched as she can and her voice does that slightly annoying warble noise. I kinda hate it

It was painful attempting to listen to this. The songs were so boring and her excessive warbling vibrato drives me nuts.

Just a girl and her guitar. Her guitar should be taken away. I prefer silence to her minimal style.

18 Based on this scale: 1 - 0 to 19 2 - 20 to 39 3 - 40 to 59 4 - 60 to 79 5 - 80 to 100 This is just not for me. I get that she's an important figure in folk music, but I just can't. Some of those notes just hurt me.

Joan Baez's voice is like an angel scratching their nails on a chalkboard

I feel bad but I really struggled to get through this one. It's a voice of its time, but the high falsetto and vibrato in her voice really starts to become grating quick cultural significance be damned. I didn't like it!

Oh god, that shrill voice was painful first thing in the morning. My tinnitus was so bad by the halfway mark, I actually thought about giving up on this. There were periods where I was lulled into a false sense of security and then the screeching would start up again. I guess this wasn't quite dreadful enough for only 1 star, but there was little here that I took any enjoyment from. The guitar playing was okay, but the horrible voice ruined this for me. I can imagine this album being weaponised by being played at loud volume to get protestors to move on, which would be slightly ironic. The folk songs chosen here had no interest to me whatsoever, boring and twee. There was little joy in this recording, it came over as too serious and almost forced. I was glad to get to the end and will make a point of never listening to this again if I can help it.

I hope you like folk ballads sung in a high-pitch warbly voice, because that's pretty much all you are getting here. There are only two songs that sound even slightly different than the rest. Wildwood Flower has a sort of bluegrass feel to it, and El Preso Numero Nueve is sung in Spanish. I didn't enjoy this at all and can't give it more than one star.

Oof. So muchbof this just feels the same. You can randomly pick a song, pick a random spit within it and pretty much know what you're going to hear. Sparse instrumentation isn't always boring but it is here. Sometimes it's okay-ish most of the time it plods along. Her voice is not exactly terrible, but its sleep inducing. It's also very same feom track to track. Factor in the way too long run time and the faint smell of hippie and I've got to hit this with the 1 star hammer. I know she's well regarded and yadda yadda but this just is not something I would ever want to listen to unless I was suffering from insomnia.

Fair warning: generally, I loathe folk music with a passion. I'm actually neutral on hip hop and rap--stop snickering. Really. I mean, if someone came out with a great rap album tomorrow, I'd be the first to say so. But folk--especially the early 60s folk revival--look, my mom listened to Ian and Sylvia and the Kingston Trio nonstop when I was a toddler and it scarred me for life. Genre per se is rarely a barrier for me, but I'll make an exception for folk. Which is all to say that I make not give this album a fair shake. You've been warned. Sure enough, Joan Baez's debut album is pretty awful, but not for the reasons I would have expected. I was tempted to begin with praise because Baez actually has pretty decent taste -- she's curated a bunch of solid tunes from various folk traditions, and her voice is strong, but no. Baez has zero interpretive skills. She approaches every tune the exact same way--not counting shifts in dynamics and an irritating vibrato--and ends up flattening the entire folk tradition into an amorphous blob. She sounds exactly like what she is--a middle class white woman with negligible life experience. She drains the blood out of every song she sings and proudly presents the bleached white corpse like it's some kind of accomplishment. Actually, I'm glad I reviewed this album because now I understand why I loathed early 60s folk as a kid. Acts like Ian and Sylvia and the Kingston Trio and yes, Joan Baez, made their living by homogenizing and whitewashing any number of musical traditions that are well worth hearing. I'm sure Joan Baez had good and pure intentions, but she ends up loving this music to death.

Bit warbly in places but she is amazing, brilliant musician, and old songs are like source material

Amazing folk. Her voice is so hauntingly beautiful. and the guitar work perfectly complements it.

If I were around in the 1960s, I would’ve fallen so hard in love with Joan Baez. The arrangements, guitar playing, voice… well I guess it’s not too late to fall in love with her. Just a reminder how big of a fumble Bob Dylan had when he lost her.

Surprisingly good. Amazing renditions of classic songs.

Pure beauty in this voice.

A 5 if you like folk music

This is fantastic. Haunting and soulful, a voice that I am glad was captured and shared with all.

It is pretty, simple, and deep. Folk in its simplest and purest form is really beautiful. She plays the guitar beautifully and her voice is clear and delivers deep touching lyrics. With so little (voice and guitar) she can deliver such deep, touching songs, speaks to how amazingly talented she is. I know a lot of these are not her original songs (common of folk at this time) but she made them her own. House of the Rising Sun for example is so well known but hearing it from her was a different experience and made see the place differently.

Beautiful voice, classic folk album. Thats why shes the goat.

It was interesting. I have more appreciation for Joan Baez's music than before.

My Girl always slays

This is maybe a 4.5 rounded up, but it was an excellent album full of wonderful folk songs front to back. I thoroughly enjoyed it more than Joni Mitchell's "Blue" which I gave a 4/5, so here we are.

Good shit, crazy guitar/voice

Absolutely fantastic album. This is real folk music. Great storytelling, an intentional flow from song to song, only the instruments that are necessary and all with a killer voice. Joan Baez's debut album is perfect! Silver Dagger, Henry Martin, John Riley and Girl of Constant Sorrow are standouts.

Very few artists could produce a quality album using only their voice and an acoustic instrument. JB doesn’t just do that, she kills it.

The guitar playing is superb, really inspirational if you’re an acoustic player! However the vocals are an acquired taste and I’d have to be in the mood to listen to her for an extended period of time.

I love her

Enjoyed this on a rainy Thursday morning. Voice is great

5/5. A beautiful voice, ethereal even. It's hard to deny why she became so popular so fast. It's almost all traditional songs and considering the release date, it kind of make sense. She could have written her own songs and cover albums are always a little worrisome but her voice is so wonderful to listen to that it honestly doesn't matter what she is singing. Sometimes albums have a good balance of lyrics, vocals, music, etc. Other times if you are just good at one of those things, it's a classic. Bob Dylan got lyrics, Santana got music, Joan Baez can have vocals. It's honestly just too good. Best Song: House of the Rising Sun, Silver Dagger, Mary Hamilton

Ethereal.

Very nice

I’m getting Pink Moon vibes from this. A bit repetitive but it’s cool.

John Baez is wonderful. This is an old-school folk album in the truest sense, so you need to be in the mood for that to enjoy it properly. But, as a collection of folk standards it's easily amongst the best. Her voice has the sweetness of early Joni Mitchell, but with her own flavour.

Holy cow. I've certainly heard of Joan Baez, but don't think I've listened to an album before. This is her debut from 1960, quite a while ago, and good lord it's incredible. She's got this ethereal voice that reminds me a bit of Joni Mitchell (no doubt there's some influence on her), but more so of The Wicker Man or something, she sounds timeless in a way that's almost scary. It also reminds me of this song from a Twilight Zone episode, called "Come Wander With Me." She's a perfect fit for the songs, which are mostly traditional songs and folk standards. I know a few here: "House of the Rising Sun," obviously, "Girl of Constant Sorrow" is cool, and what the hell, "East Virginia"??? I didn't realize that was a folk song, I thought it was made by some wacky band in the '60s or '70s. She kills that one, and so many others on here, it's just unbelievable. Wikipedia says she's also a songwriter in her own right but as far as folk/cover albums go, has anyone done better than this? And apparently it was recorded in a few days in a hotel room, with just a couple microphones and guitars. I'm just in awe, incredible album, easy 5 star for me. Amazing what someone can create with an acoustic guitar and a voice, I'm such a sucker for minimalist endeavors like this. Favorite tracks: East Virginia, Donna Donna, John Riley, Silver Dagger, House of the Rising Sun, All My Trials, Mary Hamilton, Henry Martin, El Preso Numero Nueve, I Know You Rider. Album art: Not much to it, frankly. It's a purple-filtered, but otherwise washed out, picture of Joan holding a guitar over her shoulder. Text looks like an anthropology text book inset. There's apparently another, possible original cover, but it's not much better, just a black and white silhouette style concert shot. But hey, who cares, it's 1960, and the album more than makes up for it. 5/5

Just an excellent set of traditional folk songs, recorded before the poor woman was infected by the repulsive affliction of Bob Dylan. Yeah, she's a bit warbly at times, but this kind of music actually calls for it, and at least she doesn't sound like she's singing it with her eyes shut. There's no way I'd want to listen to her every day, or even more than once or twice a year, but if the mood were to strike me, this is a lovely example of what it is.

9/10. Awesome, unique voice. Has her own style too. Holds up for 60+ years!

Soft, careful, beautiful

Great songs and a beautiful voice. Not always into this kind of stuff, but really dug it on this listen.

Wow. Seriously haunting album. This one floored me. Phenomenal.

Pure

Wow. I had forgotten how powerful her voice was. I love these classics. This was part of the soundtrack of my early college days.

Great voice, incredible lyrics, simply a treasure.

A folk legend knocks it out of the park.

I was hoping for more gripping stories, but the timeless, placeless almost medieval melodies did grow on me. The shrillness of her voice makes sense in the last song, underscoring her Mexican heritage. She makes up for it with sensitivity. Her Scottish songs (Henry Martin, Mary Hamilton) really brought this album together for me.

A beautiful voice singing simple, delightful songs.

Great album by Joan

The 1960s represented the apogee of the folk genre in mainstream terms, giving us some of the most prominent and impactful names, songs and albums that still makes its presence felt to this day. Joan Baez, album and person, encompasses this moment. As though she were both a gust of wind and a kick up the ass, Joan solidifies her stature with delicate arrangements of materials well sung and well-traveled yet her approach to them veers them into becoming the definitive versions, most notably on House of the Rising Sun, Silver Dagger and John Riley. Baez also makes poignant use of her Spanish tongue on (what was initially) the final track El Preso Número Nueve, offering representation within folk. Overall, an excellent debut and a sign of things to come.

How have I literally not listened to her much before. I know the name so it’s not lack of awareness. Somehow just haven’t listened. This was great. I love the simple production. Woman and guitar. What more do you need.

Oh wow, I didn't think I would love this as much as I do. Her voice is absolutely gorgeous, and the simplistic instruments are not only beautiful and atmospheric, but give her voice so much more of a presence. And her storytelling is just amazing, the lyrics are so captivating and really make me want to keep listening.

Ahead of it's time. Chill, yet somehow boppy at the same time.

Beautiful debut album from Joan Baez. Just her acoustic guitar and her angelic voice. So many gems here, but my favorites are House of the Rising Sun, Donna Donna, Mary Hamilton, Henry Martin, and El Preso Numero Nueve.

Casi 4, pero por El Preso Numero Nueve ...¡¡5!!

Casi 4, pero por El Preso Numero Nueve ...¡¡5!!

Enjoyed this!

I absolutely LOVED this album! Her voice is beautiful and impactful. At times it felt like she was singing me folklore stories but I guess some of her songs were based on biblical stories. So, makes sense. She loved talking about “Mary’s and Maidens”. I also liked her version of “House of the Rising Sun”, seemed more genuine coming from her”. Then she sang Spanish to me which solidified my rating! 10/10

Warm, soft, haunting. While listening to this record, I feel like I'm listening to someone telling old ghost stories around a campfire. There’s just a wonderful simplicity to it all. Just a guitar and vocals, and yet Baez and her guitar are able to tell some wonderful stories. This is another one of those folk albums that absolutely would not have interested me a few years ago, and it probably wouldn’t mesh well with me at the height of summer either. But I’m well and truly an adult now, and it’s a cold and unpleasant winter. It’d be a perfect one for exploring the great outdoors, embracing nature and the elements even at this time of year, but it’d also be great for snuggling up under a blanket with a hot chocolate in the warm comforts of home. This self-titled debut is a perfect winter companion, mostly comprising of arrangements of traditional folk songs. I’ve never heard Baez’s performances of these songs, and most of these I don’t think I’ve heard in any form, with the exception of House Of The Rising Sun (Which I forget was originally a traditional folk song) and Henry Martin (My first exposure to it was by self-proclaimed “Pirate Metal” band Alestorm!) This was an excellent record. It’s one of those sorts of albums that makes me want to move far away from society and go and live in the forest. Who needs all these computers and cars and stuff? Just give me a cabin, a campfire, a guitar and some interesting friends who are good at telling stories. I can dream. Favourite: Henry Martin

Was ready to knock a star off regardless of the score knowing that these were all covers of folklore tracks...lesson learned. Joan elevates many of these classics. Beautiful, haunting, and pure. From the first measure, voice and guitar blend incredibly for close to an hour, invoking a wide range of emotions. The sound and mix is incredibly refined for 1960, just a masterpiece from every angle. Favorite track: Mary Hamilton (and it takes a LOT for House of the Rising Sun to not be my fave)

Pekne to je, mozno v jednej pesnicke sa trosku opustila

Voice like an angel. No skips whatsoever.

Flawless folk record. Beautiful voice, great guitar and ambience. A joy to listen and a wonderful piece of history.

Pure, pure folk, of the purest kind. Just Joan on her guitar, and that voice. John Riley is utterly captivating. The guitar on Silver Dagger.

Folksy guitar-and-vocals covers of classic folk songs.

Such an excellent folk album I’m just going to give it a 5. Engaging guitar playing, singing and moments of quietude that keep you focused until the end, after which you’ll want to go back for more

Here's another artist I was hoping to get to know better in this project, and I'm glad it was her debut album for us to start. This was so earnest and sincere that it's sometimes hard not to think about Bluto smashing a folk singer's guitar in Animal House. (Stephen Bishop!) But once I get my mind set to appreciate it, it's quite beautiful and wonderful and I enjoyed Joan Baez's unique voice and her selection of songs very much. As the child of parents who appreciated, played, and sang folk music, this was a nostalgic day.

That was a nice dose of folksy music, not something that I am always into, but Joan’s voice was something special.

Pure, haunting, beautiful.

Nice to hear the first album from such a singer. While I will gravitate to her later more instrumentally complex albums, I very much enjoyed the simplicity of a beautiful voice with a guitar.

Absolutely incredible, transporting album. I adore her voice, and the songs were excellently chosen. The queen of folk to this day. Favs: Silver Dagger, House of the Rising Sun, Henry Martin, El Preso Numero Nueve, Girl of Constant Sorrow

Beautiful.