Joan Baez’s first album was released in 1960 and it was a revelation. Here was an angelic-looking, dark-haired 19-year-old singing ancient songs, most of them drawn from the Child Ballads, a set of 305 numbered ballads from England and Scotland (and several American variants) collected by Francis James Child in the late 19th century, with a soprano voice so pure and mesmerizing that it appeared as timeless as a voice in an elegant and graceful dream. She made ancient love and murder ballads seem like cool and serious business, and without Baez as a virginal-looking poster girl, the commercial end of the urban folk revival of the early ’60s might never have gotten off the ground. This release includes a remastered version…
…of that first album and adds in Folksingers ‘Round Harvard Square, Baez’s first actual record, which features her singing solo on six songs, as part of a duo with Bill Wood on four songs, and as part of a trio with Wood and Ted Alevizos on another song. The bonus set originally appeared on LP in 1959 from the little Veritas Records label and was intended as an introduction to the Cambridge, Massachusetts folk scene that was just beginning to flourish at the time. Paired like this, one realizes that Baez just didn’t suddenly appear from the heavens after all when her official album came out a year later, but that her approach and stage presence had been artfully formed and nurtured in the Cambridge folk clubs.
01 – Silver Dagger
02 – East Virginia
03 – Fare Thee Well (10,000 Miles)
04 – House of the Rising Sun
05 – All My Trials
06 – Wildwood Flower
07 – Donna Donna
08 – John Riley
09 – Rake and Rambling Boy
10 – Little Moses
11 – Mary Hamilton
12 – Henry Martin
13 – El Preso Número Nueve
14 – The Banks of Ohio
15 – Oh What A Beautiful City
16 – Sail Away Ladies
17 – Black Is The Colour
18 – Lowlands
19 – Virgin Mary (What You Gonna Call)
20 – Kitty
21 – So Soon In The Morning
22 – Careless Love
23 – Don’t Weep After Me
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