Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59515 in Music
• Released on: 2002-07-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Customer Reviews

A lament for the last of the old ballads
This CD is forty-seven minutes of mixed emotions for Joan Baez fans. After this album, the singer "went on to mine the richness of contemporary songwriters" according to the liner notes.

If you prefer the acoustical guitar and the traditional ballads as I do, this is Joan's last album that features this kind of music, and she was already crossing over with songs like "Birmingham Sunday (track 9)." Muddled in with the contemporary (well, 'sixties) songs, this CD also has two Child Ballads, an eighteenth-century broadside about a race horse, ballads sung by dead men, and a lovely poem by Lord Byron that is set to music.

In other words, traditionalists, here are a few of our favorite songs--the last known to be recorded by Joan Baez:

"Stewball"--According to the Thoroughbred Heritage web site, Skewball (not Stewball) really was a racehorse (possibly a skewbald) by the Godolphin Arabian, out of a Whitefoot mare called Bandy . Samuel Sidney ["The Book of the Horse", 1875] stated that Skewball "...won a great number of plates and prizes in England, and one famous match in Ireland." This match became the subject of a ballad, "Skewball" or "Stewball," which has endured, in varying forms, to the present day. Joan Baez isn't the only folkie to sing about Stewball. Peter, Paul, and Mary, Leadbelly, and the Kingston Trio also recorded versions of this ballad. The 'little gray mare' who raced against Skewball is named 'Molly,' 'Miss Sportsly,' or 'Griselda' in the various eighteenth century broadsides from which this ballad originated. Joan sings this song high and tremulous like a child who loves the silver-bridled Stewball and rejoices when "the gray mare she stumbles and falls to the ground."

"The Death of Queen Jane (Child #170)--a version of this ballad appears as early as 1612 and tells of the death of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII of England. Joan's clear soprano and droning accompaniment are especially effective for this ballad.

"The Unquiet Grave (Child #78)--When Joan sings this ballad she leaves out the strongest verse: "You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips;/ But my breath smells earthy strong;/ If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips,/ Your time will not be long." This song recounts the almost universal belief that excessive grieving for the dead interferes with their repose. The hair on the back of your neck will rise up when the dead man speaks to his grieving lover in Joan's plaintive, eerie lament.

"So We'll Go No More A-Roving"--It was during the famous Carnivale of Venice, when lovers roamed the streets in masks and elaborate costumes, that Byron wrote the poem which furnishes the lyrics to this song. Joan's yearning soprano perfectly conveys the spirit of the poem: Byron, grown fat and pensive, dressed in a lavish dressing gown and gazing out of his window in the Palazzo Mocenigo, thinking of what might have been.

This poem was turned into a sea shanty shortly after Byron penned it, so it has a venerable history of being put to song. A more modern version of the song (I am not making this up) is "So We'll Go No More A-Cruisin."

"Long Black Veil"--Joan records this song on one of the two bonus tracks of this CD (the other extra is "Tramp on the Street"). The lyrics, written by Grand Ole Opry veteran Danny Dill, tell the story of a man wrongfully convicted of murder. He goes to the gallows rather than compromise his best friend's wife -- in whose arms he was lying when the crime was committed. The song's central image is of the grieving adulteress walking the hills "in a long black veil," returning over and over to her hanged lover's grave. Dill drew his ballad from several sources, including stories he had read of a woman who supposedly haunted Rudolph Valentino's grave. The voice is that of the hanged man, who you hear singing from beyond the grave (see also above: "The Unquiet Grave").

Best of Early Baez
This is Baez at her best, and the folk revival at it's best. The variety of songs and the performances are the first peak of a long career. It is woth it alone for the Villa Lobos interpretation.

HISTORICAL AND TOPICAL...
Ms. Baez continues to dazzle with her voice, a voice like no other, as well as with her song selections, a blend of old, traditional folk songs and contemporary ones, some with historical significance. as well as political overtones. Never does she fail to move the listener, who is transported to another realm on the simple strength and beauty of her pure, clear, sweet voice.