Joan Baez - Farewell, Angelina

More accessible and less dark, but no less beautiful

For her fifth album "Farewell, Angelina", Joan Baez, by now an established star with Top Ten albums in both Britain and the United States, moved away from the spare, dark and atmospheric renditions of traditional folk material that had dominated her first five albums, of which the two live releases In Concert and In Concert, Part 2 had been the best.

"Farewell, Angelina" ornamented Baez' voice and guitar with acoustic double bass on all twelve tracks and half also featured Bruce Langhorn on electric guitar. Whilst this did make for a less dark atmosphere that may be easier to digest for listeners my age who never were exposed to American folk this traditional, such songs as the title track and "Hard Rain's A-Gonna-Fall" (which I knew from the brilliant 1973 Bryan Ferry rendition) showed Baez singing in a way that reaches the heart in a way seldom equalled.

The more traditional numbers themselves, like "The Wild Mountain Thyme", lost little from the changed approach of Baez and producer Maynard Solomon because Joan obviously possessed such complete confidence that she could tackle styles of music well beyond basic guitar-and-voice folk with wonderful ease - shown later on her last really good album Baptism where she lost no beauty when speaking poetry. With my knowledge of linguistics I see humour in Baez' failure to properly pronounce the front rounded vowels in "Sagt mir, wo die Blumen Sind"! "Satisfied Mind", the darkest track on the album, is made really cryptic by Baez' and Solomon's penchant for deep, beautiful arrangements.

All in all, this is a change of direction, but one with which Baez clearly was totally confident. Definitely recommended for fans of traditional folk. July 25, 2008

retro enjoyment, as good as you remember

After Eight Belles was put down at the Derby, I remembered the lyrics in Stewball, about don't bet on the little grey mare, most likely she'll stumble, most likely she'll fall... and she does, ....and pulled out my old Baez songbook, my guitar, and records. Then I ordered a few of the same but CDs. They are as good as I remember, and now I cry for Eight Belles when I hear "Stewball"."There But for fortune" is as relevent now as then, all of them are priceless, what a voice! June 3, 2008

Joan Baez

Haunting voice, lots of Bob Dylan tunes. I miss folkand this reminds why. March 15, 2007

One of her very best releases, even better now...

I confess I tired of Joan about 20 years ago, and most of the albums I have sampled since she left Vanguard for A & M and other labels leave me cold. But this one is uniformly excellent, and the three added songs only make the original a better bargain. She was in excellent voice, had superb instrumental backing, and a wonderful variety of songs. I can recall playing this a couple of times a week throughout the 70's. "Farewell Angelina" is the one I sang along with more often than the others, but all the performances are great. January 26, 2007

Even better remastered then I remembered

We had this one on LP and are so glad to have it now on CD.
We played it over and over, and the songs ran thru
my head for days. August 18, 2006

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