Joan Baez - Joan Baez/5

Released - October 1964

Genre - Folk

Producer - Maynard Solomon

Selected Personnel - Joan Baez (Vocals/Guitar); David Soyer (Cello)

Standout Track - There But For Fortune

This is actually an album I've been familiar with for many years, but has only recently crept its way onto this list. Joan Baez is an artist I've admired and enjoyed for a long time, largely down to my undying love of "Diamonds & Rust," a song of hers from 1975. It's one of the finest love songs ever written and is certainly the finest song Baez herself ever wrote, as well as being, quite possibly, also the best thing she ever recorded. It's also blatantly obvious listening to it that she had a real talent for songwriting that, had she chosen to indulge it more often, might have seen her ultimately remembered as one of the truly great singer-songwriters in folk music, in the vein of the likes of Joni Mitchell, as she certainly had the talent for it. But, for whatever reason, she chose most often to limit herself to interpreting the songs of others, or traditional folk tunes. It's possible that this tendency of hers is part of the reason why she's always remained an artist I enjoy and admire and never become one who's truly captivated me in the way that Mitchell has - there's a lot to be said for cover versions and how a new interpretation or a new voice behind a familiar song can render it totally different, or introduce its message to a new audience, but the artists I've always identified with most tend to be the ones who choose to express their own ideas creatively through writing, while Baez's decision to stay principally rooted to music's past rather than trying to create anything new makes her a slightly less interesting figure to me. It's particularly curious considering she was such an outspoken and passionate activist in matters like war, human and civil rights, the environment and much more besides - she was clearly somebody with something to say and a passion to say it, but it's odd that she so rarely chose to try and express that creatively through writing her own music.

As such, when I first started listening to Baez, I never got much further than a small handful of albums, including Diamonds & Rust, her self-titled debut and this, her third studio album (but fifth album overall including live albums, hence its title). Joan Baez I went for because I wanted to hear how she started out, this I went for because I liked the pretty picture of a tree on the front. At the time, it didn't do much to excite me, although I always loved her cover of Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune." However, I recently listened to her second album, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, which is another collection of solo acoustic interpretations of traditional folk songs in the same template as her debut, although slightly less successfully achieved in my view. I revisited Joan Baez/5 to listen to it all the way through for the first time in an age and was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying it. If anything, it's actually perhaps better than 1960's Joan Baez in that it sees the range of her musical interests beginning to expand, though it still delivers the same requisite amount of lovely, simple folk tunes sung beautifully as that earlier record did.

Joan Baez/5 was the first time Baez broadened her influences beyond traditional folk and included contemporary songs by artists like Bob Dylan (who would only recently have begun to achieve renown with 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) and Phil Ochs, and also sees her including classical material in "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5," an operatic aria that, ultimately, feels out of place and has always been a bugbear of mine on this album. I'm not a huge fan of opera but it can be powerful enough in the right context. But here, amongst a collection of more homely and comforting folk music, it feels like a forced inclusion, while the striking clarity and multi-octave range of Baez's voice, usually qualities that mark her out as such an exceptional talent, become genuinely quite grating when given free range over such an acrobatic and overwrought piece of music. Still, it's the only moment of the record that I genuinely struggle to get through - there are moments of fairly flat and uninspiring filler, like "The Death Of Queen Jane" or the faintly plodding ode-to-a-racehorse of "Stewball," but there are also some beautiful tunes here that Baez really owns.

The finest is the aforementioned "There But For Fortune," a song as powerful in its bleak and insightful assessment of the world's problems in the mid-60s as it is blessed by a truly beautiful tune. Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" is another lovely tune whose virtues become all the more apparent when sung by a voice like Baez's rather than Dylan's own nasal whine. "Go 'Way From My Window" is hauntingly quiet and pleading, while there's a sort of knees-up sense of fun to the faster-paced "When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin'". There's a sense here that as well as broadening her musical styles, Baez is experimenting in different moods more often than on her earlier records, from the world-weariness of "There But For Fortune" or the soft fear of "Go 'Way From My Window" to songs more feelgood and frivolous like the Latin fun of "O' Cangaceiro", in contrast to the more consistently whimsical and folksy atmosphere of her first album.

It's an album I find I have to go into with expectations adjusted accordingly, telling myself I just want to listen to some nice folk music sung prettily. Ultimately, that's no bad reason to enjoy a collection of good music, but there's something about it that keeps it from truly exciting me. What I enjoy most about great music is the sense of being able to get into the mind of the artist and explore a creative idea, whether that's necessarily solely through writing or by choice reinterpretations of older songs. With Baez, I often feel that she sticks to covering older material purely because she's sticking doggedly to folk traditions, and I rarely get a strong sense of her own viewpoint or character through her music. By 1964 she had already begun her vocal support of the civil rights movement, and her live performance of Pete Seeger's "We Shall Overcome" in 1963 had seen her touted as an important new protest singer. But even with all that passion to explore, there's not a great sense of it here, and only "There But For Fortune" has any sense within it of trying to assess the state of the world around her.

Still, it obviously wasn't an issue that much concerned Baez herself, or her legions of fans at the time. She was a singer who simply enjoyed singing music that touched or moved or inspired, and ultimately it's only the old cynic in me that can really have a problem with that. And when a singer has a voice as crystal-clear and beautiful as Baez, then it's impossibly to deny that sitting and listening to her sing through these songs is a really pleasant experience, and this record is genuinely lovely as long as you're comfortable with its relative lack of ambition. I've not delved into Baez's discography beyond this point - it sees her continue to diversify beyond traditional folk music to incorporate classical orchestration and to experiment with country rock music as well as folk, but by the 70s her greatest period of acclaim and success was behind her. Perhaps it was that sense of no longer being in the spotlight that gave her the requisite space she needed to try and write more often and deliver her finest work in 1975. 

Track Listing:

1. There But For Fortune (Phil Ochs)

2. Stewball (Ralph Rinzler, Bob Yellin & John Herald)

3. It Ain't Me Babe (Bob Dylan)

4. The Death Of Queen Jane (Traditional)

5. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (Heitor Villa-Lobos)

6. Go 'Way From My Window (Traditional, Arranged by John Jacob Niles)

7. I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash & Roy Cash Jr.)

8. When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin' (Traditional)

9. Birmingham Sunday (Richard Farina)

10. So We'll Go No More A-Roving (Richard Dyer-Bennet & Lord Byron)

11. O Cangaceiro (Alfredo Ricardo do Nascimento)

12. The Unquiet Grave (Traditional)