Track Listing

1. Ghetto
2. If I Were a Carpenter
3. Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word
4. There But for Fortune
5. John Riley
6. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
7. Mary Hamilton
8. Manha de Carnaval
9. If I Knew
10. With God on Our Side
11. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
12. Geordie
13. Te Ador
14. No Expectations
15. Sweet Sir Galahad
16. Turquoise
17. Farewell Angelina
18. Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8700 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.com essential recording
She had the public persona of a saint, and a face and voice that captured all the idealism, innocence, and optimism of the '60s folk revival. She wasn't the movement's greatest talent, but her work helped shape all women balladeers who followed. Baez's best youthful work is here, including a host of Dylan songs: "Don't Think Twice," "Gates of Eden," "Farewell Angelina," and "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word," one of the best songs Dylan wrote but never recorded. Her version of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" is her finest vocal interpretation, a political song that never ceases to move. --Roy Francis Kasten

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Compliation Of Her First Ten Years!
This is a great collection of Joan Baez's amazing work over the first ten years of her recording career. It is not what one could rightfully call her greatest hits, for she was not an artist who released many singles or who got an awful lot of exposure on AM radio during the 1960s and early 1970s. Instead, she was mainly played on hip FM stations, and of course, was played incessantly by folkies in their record players, so that her music wafted through the dormitories and off the college campuses of the time. So, although there are a few songs included here like "love Is Just A Four Letter Word" that were on the charts, most of them are known better as songs from albums one listened to again and again.

Thus, we have songs like "Ghetto", "There But For Fortune", and Dylan's "With God On Our Side", all beautifully done and wonderful to listen to, but certainly not songs that ever had much time on the popular airwaves of the times. So too with songs like "Sweet Sir Galahad", a song written by Joan describing her sister Mimi finally beginning to recover from the loss of her husband Richard Farina in a tragic motorcycle accident, or "No Expectations", a wonderful folksy interpretation of the Mick Jagger-Keith Richards song. There are a number of traditional songs here like "Farewell Angelina", "John Riley", and "Mary Hamilton". And as an added benefit, there are a number of other Bob Dylan songs, such as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", and "You Ain't Going Nowhere". All in all, this is a great collection and a fair representation of the veritable mountain of recording work Joan accomplished in the first ten years of her career.

Exquisite
If you want just one CD that gives you an overview of Joan Baez's career and contains her greatest hits, well...you won't find one. Her career has been too long and varied for that. She was at Woodstock and at Live Aid. She covered traditional English and Spanish folk songs, protest and mainstream pop.

Joan's is the finest female voice of the 60's folk revival and protest movement -- pure and melodious and true. This particular CD has too much Dylan for my taste (although, contrary to Amazon's editorial, Gates of Eden is not on this album). Good at the time, these now sound very dated. But that is an accurate reflection of the period. We tend to forget now that a great many fans admired Dylan's songwriting but wished he would leave it to the sweet-voiced Joan to sing them.

My personal favorites are the traditional English songs Mary Hamilton, Geordie and John Riley. She sings them exquisitely. If you share that taste, you must get this CD.

Given that this album has a wide variety of music and the resale value seems quite high, this is a prime candidate for ripping and burning the tracks you like and selling it on, especially as the insert notes are minimal and not worth keeping.

As a child of the 60s, the album of hers that I remember best and which now seems most representative is her eponymous 'Joan Baez'. Start either with that album or with this one.

The Anti-Diva!
Joan Baez `s clarity and sincerity simply radiate on this compilation. She has a fine voice, singing in the upper ranges with little tremolo; the effect is art rather than artifice. This CD displays her understated yet powerful voice in just over 70 minutes of peace and protest. (By the way, I hear from someone who's met her that she's very nice.)

Some of the finest songs here are those written by Bob Dylan, "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" is revealed as a sexy love song (even with all that stuff about "Genghis Khan"). "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" is probably the best song on the CD, she captures the complex emotions with wonderfully expressive singing and guitar--it's the best version I've ever heard. She also does a compelling version of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"; she illuminates Dylan's lengthy standard, and it sounds fresh and immediate.

The first song, "Ghetto," is unfortunately also the worst. The singing is fine, but the bass line sounds right out of (the worst of) an Elvis show. It also sounds dated lyrically, as Ms. Baez sings about rising to the revolution, and in "building a new Jerusalem there will be no more ghetto at all." Oh well, it's an honest reflection of the decade's optimism and promise.

"If I were a Carpenter" sounds less sexist when sung by a woman, and its treatment here is soft and loving. The country guitar work on "Love is Just a Four-Letter" word is not to my tastes, but again, her voice rises above this. "If I Knew" is a more up-tempo work, with excellent accompaniment (I wish the players on each track were listed), and a satisfying bridge. She also does a nice, slightly country, version of the Stones' "No Expectations."

Joan Baez also plays guitar beautifully, in the same effective yet unembellished style of her singing: "There but For Fortune" and "John Riley" are fine examples. She seemingly transcends time on traditional folk songs like "Mary Hamilton" (there's a nice little lilt to her voice here), and live recordings of "Geordie," and the flamenco-tinged "Te Ador." The singing is angelic. Her own "Sweet Sir Galahad" and Dylan's "Farewell Angelina" are also beautiful examples of her work. There are so many excellent songs to enjoy!

Simple, beautiful, and thought-provoking, Joan Baez's `first decade' CD is a welcome look back at one of our national treasures.