24. Joan Baez — Joan Baez (1960)

1. And with that: welcome to the 1960’s. I’ll confess: I’ve never really listened to Joan Baez, for whatever reason. But listening to this record, it feels like an ideal way to work into a new decade. This is simple, basic, traditional folk music, but to hear it through the lens of a single female voice and a guitar feels like a small breath of fresh air compared to the earlier country records I’ve listened to in this list.
2. I haven’t listened much to Baez, but I love to have opinions or make assumptions about things I don’t know (typical white man), and Baez’s sound here is about what I expect — an angelic, trilly voice singing lovely if simple folk tunes. In other words: a prototypical singer-songwriter. So I was a bit surprised to find that she wrote none of these tracks; they’re almost all credited as “traditional” or “public domain,” with three of the 12 songs credited to others. Baez manages to infuse them with a deep feeling of intimacy nonetheless, making them her own.
3. The only track I really knew here going in was “House of the Rising Sun.” On a whole, they tend to blend together a bit for me; the moments I most appreciate are when Baez pops on the guitar, as on the opener “Silver Dagger” (an absolute gem and a hell of an introduction to Baez) or “Wildwood Flowers.” Most of the tunes she sings here are slower, leaning into the more celestial elements of her voice, but I appreciate the fun side.
4. For whatever reason, this album reminds me of my mom. She had a flower girl side to her in her younger days, and for whatever reason I can picture her sitting around the family vacation house in the woods with this record spinning, laughing with her sisters. It’s a comforting image.

One Essential Song:

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