Joan Baez was never a great guitar player. She still isn’t; competent but not very good. But she had a beautiful voice that soared effortlessly above the hubbub of raucous pop cacophony that passed for music in the ‘60’s. In those days I was beguiled by her voice and her politics: the politics no more and the voice isn’t quite what it used to be but still a nostalgia indulgence for me.
Here she is in a farewell concert playing what appears to be a rather delicious Martin 0-45 guitar:
She has always been terrific (her politics matter not a whit in terms of her talent*). And my favourite has always been Diamonds and Rust.
Baez had no trouble at all with The Band’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, a song that today the perennially aggrieved and humourless would doubtless peg as non-PC, what with all that tricky Confederate stuff in it.
* I do like a lot of Sting’s jazzier offerings, especially his Portuguese- and Spanish-language versions, regardless of their all too obvious political slant.