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.

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.

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

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

Judas Priest brought me to Joan Baez. Joan's amazing voice kept me here. She was 19 when she made this album. Just outstanding. She should have a few more albums on this list.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Stunning iconic voice

Beautiful songs

Joan Baez has a beautiful and exquisite voice and a preternatural ability to communicate the drama and narrative of folk songs. Personally, I generally prefer a grittier tone (Karen Dalton is possibly an extreme example of a folk singer with a more distinctive voice) than Joan Baez's crystal-clear soprano, but it is really hard to argue with the quality of her singing. I mean, this was recorded very quickly with, like, two microphones in live takes, with just one or two guitars providing subtle accompaniment, and she nails it. She absolutely delivers beautiful, sensitive and compelling performances all the way through, with nothing to hide behind. Hard to believe she was only 19. Would it have been more appropriate to include one of her subsequent albums that showed off her songwriting? Maybe. But this is an exquisite example of her to arrange and perform traditional folk material. I think this is possibly my favourite version of the House of the Rising Sun -- it makes more sense with a female narrator, and Joan Baez's performance just feels devastatingly real. Highlights: Silver Dagger, House of the Rising Sun, El Preso Numero Nueve. 3.5 stars, rounding up.

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.

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.

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

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.

Look, no.

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

Why do Americans love vibrato so much? Just sounds like the poor girl is trying to sing with a massage gun to her throat

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

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

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.

Not as unpleasant as I feared.

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

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.

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.

Joan they can never make me hate you and your cover of the house of the rising sun

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

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.

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.

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.

(3/5) The folk music that sprung from the late 50s, early 60s, was.. interesting. It was clearly a revolt against the big sounds of the jazz/swing music from the prior decades. It was also an interesting take on historical music as well. I guess, musically, Joan was as good a person as any to plumb the depths of this well. Her voice is ok (definitely an acquired taste) and the lone guitar is played as skillfully as the simple music demands. There are a few well known standards ("House.." immediately stood out) in here and I'm sure a few others. Overall an interesting artifact from this period. Normally this would get a polite '2', but seeing as this is the only album from an important FEMALE artist on the list, I'll inflate it. We get **TWO** 'xx' albums but only ONE Joan Baez?? (.. just one egregious example among many .. also NO SUPREMES.) I might not like it much but I respect the influence and importance of her work.

Joan Baez There is nothing bad about this album at all, it’s very good. I love the tone and timbre of her voice, the playing has a sweet and delicate poise, and the song selection and arrangements are excellent. But I do struggle a little to get past the sedulousness that pervades this. I love the opening three tracks, but there is an earnestness and seriousness in this period of folk music that can at times undercut the quality of the music, and I think that's the case on much of this, particularly over the last half where she dials up the tremulousness. It’s a very pleasant listen, but I wish it was more than that - it is beautifully sung and played but it feels like it’s lacking something to make it truly stand out, so I’ll go for a high 3 😁😁😁 Playlist submission: East Virginia

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

Annoying

Incredibly boring. Baez's voice is shrill and the songs too samey. I honestly think it is nothing really to do with her or the music per se, more the genre and amount time that has passed since it came out. It just isn't very interesting.

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!

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.

Holy s***, I feel like I was put under a spell the moment she sang the first note. One of the biggest surprises of this journey for me as I literally never heard of her before. And no, I didn’t know about her and Dylan’s romance or watched the recent movie, so I really went into this blind. Joan is incredible and I swear she is casting spells through her voice. I am in awe and in a trance as I listen to each song.

I am left in awe with her voice and songs she was just 19

i think this album just changed my life

The voice of an angel. I thought I might be bias going in because I’ve loved Joan and this album for years, but this listen through exceeded expectations. I know this music is not for everyone, but for me this is what music is about. Beautiful singing and guitar, incredible storytelling, and music that bridges the old world to the new. Incredible album. Top Songs: Silver Dagger, All My Trials, John Riley, El Preso Numero Nueve, I Know You Rider

9/10 Maybe a bit long, BUT it is part of the line between the old world and the new. Her voice is incredible, the guitar perfect. Recorded on a rug in a ballroom. Nowhere to hide. The root of much of the music I love, so gets the bump up into the hallowed 5 stars. I was also blown away that this was 1960 - a sign of a great album

This is a delicious album. I've enjoyed a lot listening to it. Baez's voice is very sweet and warm, and it matches perfectly the album's sound. Also, it is a pretty impressive album, a collection of some beautiful traditional folk songs, so well arranged and covered with a lot of taste. It's such a great album, and one with a very particular sound.

INSANE!!!! bob dylan was a fool for fumbling her

Absolutely gloriously pure voice!

I never would've imagined that this album, and more specifically, her voice, was so controversial. Sure, it's dated (in a way any 66-year-old traditional-folk record would be), but it seems the best parts about her singing, which are what makes this whole thing special, are what many people find grating. I guess it comes with the territory of expressive singing, especially when it is high-pitched. But, to me, her voice is breathtaking. Also, I loved the mexican song at the end, wish there was more of that!

Beautiful voice.

I am rounding the legendary Joan Baez up to 5/5 despite those coupla times her sustained high notes had me scrambling for the volume control. And I’m doing so because Joan Baez, along with Bob Dylan and maybe others in the early 60s folk pantheon, formed one of the tributaries into much of my favorite music: the revolutionary music of that decade and its descendants. I would like to think that if I were a young man in 1960 this would have been on my turntable.

Perfect album!. Donna Donna and House Of The Rising Sun are the masterpieces!

One of the two greatest folk singers of all time to come out of the 60's and still be going. An artist I listen to all the time and a magnificent introductory album.

A 5 if you like folk music

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

Good shit, crazy guitar/voice

Enjoyed this on a rainy Thursday morning. Voice is great

Lovely and haunting, spare and magnificent.

Once again I must reiterate how I am a sucker for a pleasant voiced lady strumming an acoustic guitar. Joan Baez has a lovely voice and the material is here to let her sing. There is not much beyond that. This is part of that 60s folk music moment, artists went about rediscovering and reinterpreting old standards. I enjoyed this album. I’ll give it a 3.5 that Im bumping up to a 4 for appreciation of Baez career. Highlights That stretch from “House of the Rising Sun”to “Little Moses” really got to me. Loved it.

There's something gorgeous about the simple combination of a voice frolicking with a guitar that has all but disappeared from our music these days. Despite creating some of the most achingly beautiful music of all time, Joan Baez has been overshadowed by her grit-voiced male counterpart because ... men, I guess.

this self titled album felt like an offering to whatever it is you find Divine. there's so much emotional depth in her lyrics. genuinely felt the brokenness. Baez is safe in her own sharing of vulnerability. her storytelling and images of atlas... just powerful.

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

Very pleasantly surprised.

195. Joan Baez - Joan Baez (1960) 9.5.26 Variety: 3 Adequacy: 5 Listenability: 3 Uniqueness: 2 Emotionality: 4 = 3.4 rounded down to a 3 I find myself this morning realizing that I am nowhere near as familiar with Joan Baez as I thought I was. Looking up her big hits, none of them ring a bell, and the song I associate with her most - Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" - I don't think she ever charted with. I'm pretty sure I've heard a live version though. Or maybe I've just absorbed 40+ years of pop cultural tropes where this song has been associated ( not entirely mistakenly so) with the stereotypical hippie. I think a couple things are at work here. First the song itself while written way earlier, is indeed a protest song that I think was picked up and batted around by and proved influential to those in the later 60s. And Baez herself had a pretty well documented and dedicated involvement in anti-war and peace movements. That coupled with me not being a fan of her earnest vocals early on I think bled together to make me think she was some hippie icon, when in fact she was the real fucking deal, having been an old resister well before she became famous in the early 60s, and continuing on into the modern era ( up to a few years ago!) when all the dirty hippie posers ( I really despise the hippie aesthetic btw as I think it was largely fueled by gross dudes who wanted easy access to drugs and sex and took advantage of a lot of young women and idealistic kids and who even the most effective of were ultimately just very, very loud and had no follow through/ They had their chance and fucking blew it.) had long since given up their schtick. Being rich and famous probably allowed her the luxury of dedicating time and money to causes, but at least she conritbuted something. Like it or not, the sentiment is admirable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHQ7N9lEl_E Anyway. THE TRACKS "Silver Dagger" - Have to say I am still not 100% onboard with Baez's vocals. She does a fine job, with the material and there's nothing really to criticize about her singing. It's just too pretty for me. For this sort of material. Great guitar work here as well. It is interesting to compare this song in particular to how it was arranged by one of her male counterparts, Dave Van Ronk - who changes it up to be about the man trying to steal the woman away, with her father's permission of course. I think this is going to be a rough listen for me, when I like the material, the playing, but find the delivery to be too smooth. It all balances out though. "East Virginia" - This one worked a lot better for me. Baez sounds much more forlorn and sad. It's also a better melody I think, and hearkens back to the old English folk ballad style in the delivery. "Fare Thee Well (10,000 Miles)" - This felt much more like the sort of thing that would be fodder for a Peter, Paul, and Mary album. ( not a fan btw and relieved they are not on the list). Baez's voice soars on this and sort of overpowers it. Again, I'm struggling with the fact she's actually doing a great job. I just don't like how ... proper it sounds. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm crazy. I haven't read any other user reviews of this, but curious to see if her voice is a sticking point for anyone else. With "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down" and a couple of her other 70s tracks I've heard she sound SO much more relaxed and natural in her delivery, so maybe she was too earnest and eager ( only 19 when she recorded this which is impressive) to please on this one. I dunno. This is starting to sound like a me issue. "House of the Rising Sun" - This is a hard one to mess up, and Baez acquits herself well enough. I really liked the softer bits on here at the ends of her lines. It's when she goes BIG that she loses me. The material is strong though, so strong that more than a few people have polished their reputations with it. "All My Trials" - The playing was great on this one, delicate and appropriate to the lullaby-like structure, dark as that lullaby is. I'm reminded a bit of Cat Stevens here, whose delivery can get feel a little overbaked as well. "Wildwood Flower" - This was WAY more my speed, with the fingerpicking, Appalachian flavor in full effect. This was great in fact. I wish she could have stayed in this register for everything on here. The uptempo feel helps distinguish this one as well. When she does go high on here, she ends up going into a very awesome country diva sound that makes me wonder if she ever did an album of country standards. ( Edit: looks like shed did! It's a compilation called The Joan Baez Country Music Album. I will give this a spin and see what's up). This was wonderful stuff. "Donna Donna" - Slow and sad, and makes better use of Baez's ability to go into that English folk ballad mode. I'm imagining she would have killed it guesting with a group like Fairport Convention. I don't see that she ever did, but she did record a version of my all time favorite folk ballad, that Fairport Convention recorded an iconic version of. - "Matty Groves" by Joan Baez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd6vIBV-f-A - "Matty Groves" by Fairport Convention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtVkYMFueWs - "Little Musgrave (alt title)" by Jean Ritchie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27wejRHnyxU "John Riley" - This one has very similar vibes, but works a lot better for me, I think due to the much catchier melody. Very pretty, very sad. This formula seems to be working much better along with the more country-ish for me than the bigger swings. "Rake and Rambling Boy" - This one fits more in the country-ish mode, but she mixes in that big, big, delivery which sours it a bit for me. "Little Moses" - Her voice suited this one pretty well, as she stays down low and delivers it softly and like a religious lullaby. Sweet and easy to imagine a loving mother sending her kid off to bed with this. "Mary Hamilton" - Again with the big swings. This one isn't as bad as some though. I can hear some of Joni Mitchell's vocal inflections on this one though, and I can't imagine that Mitchell wasn't a big Baez fan. "Henry Martin" - Not a seas shanty per se, but adjacent enough to make me wonder if Baez dipped her into any of those ( Edit: not that I can find). "El Preso Número Nueve" - This was awesome. I could listen to a whole album of Baez performing mariachi numbers. That super emotional soaring quality is very much suited to it. And the guitar work here is badass. HIGHLIGHTS - "East Virginia" - "Wildwood Flower" - "Donna Donna" - "John Riley" - "Little Moses" - "El Preso Número Nueve" MIDLIGHTS - "Silver Dagger" - "Fare Thee Well (10,000 Miles)" - "House of the Rising Sun" - "All My Trials" - "Rake and Rambling Boy" - "Mary Hamilton" - "Henry Martin" LOWLIGHTS - FINAL THOUGHTS I was looking forward to this one, even though I'm not a fan of Baez's vocal delivery. I can admit she's a true talent, and while her voice is pretty, and full of emotion it just hits me wrong with a good portion of these songs. I feel like they should all be dirtier, and well... more traditionally folkier. The few times I'd heard her sing growing up I didn't much care for it wither, but I didn't have the context or experience to realize just why that was. In the decades since I've listened to a lot of folk and roots music and have found that my tastes lean very hard into the more authentic, rustic, and rough around the edges stuff, both in production and vocals. As lame as it sounds to say it, I prefer the more authentic stuff, maaaaaan. Having just recently listened to a bunch of Jean Ritchie recordings does not help Baez in comparison. By comparison, that stuff is haunting and ghostly, and hits my sweet spot. Dylan skirts by in this regard due to his explosive creative period, and his unique voice, with it's roughness already built in. Baez, I hate to say it has a voice that's just damn pretty for me. I admire and respect the woman, and her arrangements on these tracks are undeniably good, as is her performance. It's just not may taste. So she will get the rare bump from me because of that. The influence she had on female performers in particular cannot be overstated - all the way from the folkies of the 60's, every singer songwriter you can name from the 70s, and alt country artists well into the 80s and beyond. And that's not even considering that she deserves a lot of credit for recognizing and championing Bob Dylan, drawing eyes and ears and dollars by recording his work and getting him valuable stage time. She vouched for the dude, and helped get that monster career moving. Pretty sure he ended up doing her dirty in return, which seems par for the course for so many of these "great" men on the list. Her body of original work though has also not made a very deep impact in the popular culture. At least not one that has lasted much beyond the early 70s, so that's another small criticism. She's a musical icon without an iconic set of songs, which is a strange space in the popular culture to inhabit. This is her only album on the list, and having heard none of the others I can assume it was picked primarily for its outsized influence, and that works great. Also, her cover of "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down" is SUPERB, and I think is the primary version of the song that exists in my mind, which does make me want to check out some of her 70s stuff... Edit: I took a detour to dive into that country compilation album and it was uniformly excellent. It's from a lot of different periods I guess, but she sounds way more confident and relaxed on all of this, and stays in a fine register. Several of these I listened to on repeat. I would highly recommend to fans of Neko Case. PLAYLIST ALTERATIONS - I could see myself revisiting the highlights here FURTHER LISTENING - Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie - The Smithsonian Folkways Collection by Pete Seeger - The Wayfaring Stranger by Burl Ives - Saturday Night and Sunday Too by Jean Ritchie - Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan - Van Ronk Sings by Dave Van Ronk - Song to a Seagull by Joni Motchell - Gliding Bird by Emmylou Harris - I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again by Buffy Sainte-Marie - The Joan Baez Country Music Album by Joan Baez - Bonnie Raitt by Bonnie Raitt - "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave you" by Led Zeppelin - "Diamonds & Rust" by Judas Priest - The Tigers Have Spoken by Neko Case

2.9 2x great voice

Nice voice, nice songs, nice guitar, but in the end you gotta love folk songs to like this album.

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.

In my generation, Baez was one of those artists, like Willie Nelson, that you had to like for your hippie "bona fides." I always hated her music and her voice, which is sometimes most akin to someone bowing a handsaw if you've ever heard that done.

I want to like Joan Baez a lot more than I actually enjoy listening to Joan Baez. Always in our hearts, rarely on our stereos, sorry ma'am

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

Boring shrill and not my thing. It's like what if the most annoying vegan you ever met at a party, also brought a guitar.

If she skipped the warbling, her music would be 10x better. As it is, she's a yodeling hippie.

I think the songs are good, but it's difficult to say for sure because she's singing over them.

Who needs waterboarding when you've got that voice?

This is way too folky for me, the high notes way too high, and a 19 year-old singing about love and the next moment about "and when... I'm in my coffin" isn't strictly what I'm keen on. But this was educational, as I obviously heard of Baez before but never listened to any of her songs.

I never listened to Joan Baez because I was so sure I wouldn’t like her music one bit, and once again, good instincts, me.

This was almost unlistenable with her very shrill annoying voice sounding like she recorded it on a very bumpy road with how much her voice was going up and down. Not sure why anyone would think this is a must listen to album

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.

Special, Her perfect voice and traditional folk songs. While there are lots of essential Joan baez albums, this one is right up there. But, while I'm here, this album has gone out over the years under a number of different covers. One Album A Day hasn't chosen on of the better ones here.

Her voice is beautiful. Her version of House of the Rising Sun gave me goosebumps. What a fun album of folk songs. I really like folk music so this was right up my street, I know it isn’t for everyone. I like the contrast between the softer and more powerful singing she does. And I love the acoustic guitar, it’s always intricate enough to be interesting but never so much that it takes away from her singing. Fav song: House Of The Rising Sun Least fav: East Virginia

Stark but really excellent.

Rating: 4.5/5 Short Review: Her voice is almost too perfect. Clear, controlled, beautiful, and occasionally a little haunting. And there’s barely anything around it, which makes the whole album feel incredibly intimate. I did start craving a little more variety toward the end. Voice and acoustic guitar can only carry me so far before my attention starts wandering. But the simplicity is also what makes the best songs hit so hard. Nothing to hide behind. Favorite Track: “Silver Dagger.” Beautiful song. There’s this quiet sadness to it that stuck with me immediately. Her voice against that simple guitar is basically all it needs.

Just a striking voice and a hand-plucked guitar. Performed with an earnestness you rarely hear today. But if you can set aside your jaded twenty-first century disaffection, you may find this album is actually quite beautiful. (At first, my only complaint was that it felt too long and drawn out, but I later learned that this was specific to the reissue, which adds three tracks that don’t add to the overall impact to the album, and instead make it feel overwrought. But maybe it’s just testing the stamina of this distraction-prone listener.)

What a voice. Incredible

Not normally my thing at all. Loved it. Class.

This record is a vibe. Her voice is beautiful, and the songs are super pleasant. When the subject matter gets a bit religious I roll my eyes but thats "old standards" for ya. Joan seems like a national treasure through all of her advocacy and public comments. 4.5/5 -> 5/5

Gentle folk, nice voice and cool acoustic guitar parts

I don't always like folk music, but wow this was good. Her vocalizations did not feel complex, but they suited the songs so well. El Preso Numero Nueve was really different than the rest of the album, but striking in its variation.

Enjoyable album of traditional songs. East Virginia, John Riley, & Mary Hamilton were standouts to me. Interesting to learn Joan’s father had a significant hand in x-ray technology in the 1940/50’s.

beatufil voice

keihard gejankt 10/10

Wonderful.

Classic

A full five for this giant of traditional folk music

Hauntingly beautiful. Every song is storytelling perfection. Even a Spanish song.