Review: Joan Baez - Joan Baez (1960)

Tracks: 1) Silver Dagger; 2) East Virginia; 3) Fare Thee Well; 4) House Of The Rising Sun; 5) All My Trials; 6) Wildwood Flower; 7) Donna Donna; 8) John Riley; 9) Rake And Rambling Boy; 10) Little Moses; 11) Mary Hamilton; 12) Henry Martin; 13) El Preso Numero Nueve.

REVIEW

There is one thing that’s been seriously bugging me about ‘Silver Dagger’, the opening song on Joan’s proper debut album and, partly because of that, one of her most remembered and recognizable trademark numbers. Like most of the songs on here, it is marked traditional, arr. by Joan Baez. However, despite having brow­sed through a lot of sources tracing the song’s origins all the way back to at least 1817 (the date of the first known publication of a version), I have not been able to locate a single printed version or musical recording whose lyrics would bear any­thing but the most remote connection to the words as sung by Joan. This may be just an oversight on my part, of course, but when source after source either just fails to say a single word about the differences or, at best, mumbles something about "this appears to be a fragment of the full ballad" without at all indicating the particular version of the ballad of which it happens to be a fragment... well, this is where I start getting suspicious.

The history of the song, most commonly known under the titles of ‘Drowsy Sleeper’ or ‘Silver Dagger’ (some claim that these are originally two different songs that got contaminated because of similar subject matters, but this just makes the story even more confusing), is extremely complicated; however, the absolute majority of printed and recorded versions involve (a) two young lovers, one of whom is goading the other to elope with him; (b) the lady’s parents, one or both of which are actually in possession of the dagger in question; (c) the event of (rarely) murder or (much more common) suicide, where­upon the guy kills himself upon learning that the girl is refusing to run away with him, and the girl (optionally) kills herself upon learning that her lover has died. (It is never explained why the entire neighborhood is armed with silver daggers — do they have a werewolf issue in the community? — but I guess it’s just no class when you kill yourself with common steel). This is how The Oaks Family sang it, for instance, as well as tons of other artists.

Nothing of the sort exists in Baez’ song, which features a completely inverted story: sung entirely from the fair maiden’s perspective, it presents a retort to the young gentleman ("don’t sing love songs, you’ll wake my mother"), whereupon the fair maiden rather mercilessly puts down the whippersnapper, referring him to lessons learned from her parents ("all men are false, says my mother") and concluding that "I’ve been warned and I’ve decided / To sleep alone all of my life". If you look attentively enough at the lyrics, it turns out to be such a decidedly modern (and feminist) take on the song that I have the most serious doubts these verses could be a "fragment of the full ballad"; it totally looks like a very recent stylization that Joan either wrote herself, passing it out as «traditional», or, perhaps, unknowingly copied from some other recent «modernizer» of traditional folklore. In any case, in her interpretation what used to be essentially a folk variation on the perennial story of Romeo and Juliet becomes a much more psychologically complex and morally ambiguous tale of the difficulties in male-female relationship — depending on your own feelings, you might see Joan’s ‘Silver Dagger’ as either a lament about the detrimental effect of parental brainwashing and dictatorship on the happiness of young people (as an early glimpse of the hippie vibe!), or as a woman’s proud and determined stance against attempts at male domination (as an early glimpse of the #MeToo vibe!). Given the verse about "my daddy is a handsome devil", it’s far more likely that Joan’s take is of the second variety, and if so, the credits should probably read «anti-traditional, inverted by Joan Baez». Why, in all my roaming around the Web in search of a solid discussion of the song, I have never seen these points raised by anybody is a bizarre mystery, particularly when the differences in lyrical versions are just staring you in the face.

The one general lesson to be taken home from the mystery is this: always be on your guard with contemporary artists claiming to, or (if they do not actually make any such claims) at least giving the impression of transmitting or reviving the heritage of the past. Much, if not most, of the folk movement of the 1950s and early 1960s cared far less about preservation and authenticity (this was largely reserved for ethnomusicologists with a more academic frame of mind, like Alan Lomax) than it did about modernizing the old vibes and upping their relevance for young, idealistic members of the civil rights movement — which is, of course, the main reason for its popularity in the first place. We like to think of somebody like Bob Dylan as the guy who really changed the rules of the game, but the fact is that he did not so much introduce the changes as he simply took the most complete advantage of them (in a "I’ll see your ‘Silver Dagger’ and raise you ‘Blowing In The Wind’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright!’" kind of way).

Let us take another example, which also baffles the mind in certain respects: ‘All My Trials’, a beautiful, peaceful song delivered from the perspective of a mother on her dying bed, preparing to pass away after a life of hardship and toil. Where are the roots? The very first recording of it comes very late — on the 1956 debut album of Bob Gibson, a folk singer from Brooklyn who is, I think, mostly remembered now as the guy who introduced Joan Baez to the world at the Newport Festival in 1959. On that album, it is called ‘Bahaman Lullaby’, because, apparently, "this combination lullaby and spiritual is widely known in the Bahamas, where it is sung as a hymn", although the liner notes further state that "Gibson learned this arrangement from the singing of Erik Darling of New York". Not sure if Erik Darling, a core New Englander, ever went to the Bahamas to pick it up; later on, in 1964, Joan wrote in her own Joan Baez Songbook that the song must have begun life as a pre-Civil War Southern gospel tune, which was somehow introduced specifically to the Bahamas where it became a lullaby (when? why?) and then brought back to the States during the folk revival (by whom?).

The only two pieces of allegedly hard evidence I’ve been able to find proving that at least a part of this song was written before 1956 are (a) the verse about "if living were a thing that money could buy, then the rich would live and the poor would die" — there are claims that inscriptions like these are occasionally found on English gravestones dating from the 18th century; and (b) the beginning of the song, written down as "Hush, little baby, and don’t you cry; yo’ mudder an’ fadder is bo’n to die!" in The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, 1912–1943. In the original edition of the book, this bit is marked as a «Negro Fragment», but whether the entire song ever existed in some sort of coherent form as an African-American spiritual prior to the 1950s remains unclear. Given how many records exist for most of the other material on Joan’s debut, I highly doubt that.

But even if ‘All My Trials’ was not originally cobbled together, as a stylistic imitation, by the likes of Erik Darling or Bob Gibson themselves, it nevertheless behaves like a traditional folk song is expected to behave — reflecting the imprint of just about anybody who comes in contact with it. Take this lyric: "I’ve got a little book with pages three / And every page spells liberty". Why pages three, and not four or five or fifty? Well — probably so it could rhyme with liberty. But doesn’t a line like "every page spells liberty" strike you as, I dunno, a bit more Walt Whitman than old «Negro spiritual»? Or, for that matter, a bit more Greenwich Village? And what book in particular is it talking about? Amusingly, here is a reference to a recent paper on the connection between ideas of morality and liberty and the legal system, which uses this particular line to stress the importance of the concept of liberty in American popular thought — but the actual references are to versions by Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Harry Belafonte (and Belafonte’s version does not even have that verse, as you can hear for yourselves, nor does Cynthia Gooding’s from 1959).

Ah! But here’s good old Pete Seeger in 1961 — one year after Joan, but his version certainly does not follow Joan’s (neither in melody nor in verse sequence), and he gives "I have a little book ’twas given to me / And every leaf spells ‘victory’". Now this makes perfect sense: the book is the Gospel, and ‘victory’ refers to victory over Death which is the one thing that the Lord himself and the poor dying mother shall soon have in common. It seems most likely that Joan came across a verse like that, and, with her typical aversion to direct usage of Christian imagery in her singing (note that she also changes the word "Christians" to "pilgrims" in the last verse), decided to make things a little more obtuse and, at the same time, more con­temporary. What is the "little book with pages three" in her reckoning? The Communist Manifesto? Last I remember my Soviet school history lessons, that one was a little thicker than three pages. The Declaration of Independence? Well, I guess it might depend on the printed font size, but there’s something bizarre about a poor ailing mother dying with the Declara­tion of Independence in her hands. The Emancipation Proclamation? See, now there’s a challenge for us.

All of this lengthy excourse, which, of course, has little to do with the overall musical qualities or emotional impact of Joan Baez’ debut, has seemed necessary to me just because the original liner notes to the Vanguard release, written by the label’s co-owner and Joan’s producer Maynard Solomon, an experienced and well-educated musicologist by trade, do not even drop a single hint at the possibility of Baez’ own original lyrical input — either considering the issue completely irrelevant or, perhaps, «self-understood», as in, "each and every folk artist add their own words and there’s so much nothing out of the ordinary about it that it ain’t even worth mentioning". And maybe it wouldn’t be worth mentioning if, on the whole, the album were a strictly academic exercise in musical revival — but the liner notes do admit that one of Joan’s goals is to bring the old material closer to the contemporary listener’s heart and soul, though not through overt «commercialization» of the folk tradition but rather through «purification». Note, however, that «purity» and «authenticity» are far from the same thing. There is certainly a lot of purity on this record — so much, in fact, that after sitting through it, I get a very strong craving for getting as dirty as possible; just how much authenticity is on it is for somebody to establish through a far more detailed and well-researched study than this little review here. One thing’s for sure: Joan Baez was not out there to transmit an old sound — much like Dylan soon would, she was there to try and introduce a new one.

And a pretty monolithic sound it is. Once again, let me return to Maynard Solomon: "Joan retains a sense of stylistic authenticity, for she does not impose a uniform style on each song regardless of its origin". I can understand an artist’s producer and promoter’s wish to present his client in the best light possible — but it would be hard for anybody except the most partial and biased critic to deny that this is precisely what Ms. Baez does, both here, there, and everywhere: impose her uniform style on each song, totally regardless of its origin. This is not done intentionally, through some evil design — this is just the way she is. Like Leonard Cohen would write many years later, she was born like this, she had no choice, she was born with the gift of a golden voice, and that voice was both a blessing and a curse. Unlike some people I know (including my own dear wife, but shh, don’t let her know I let that slip!), I do not run away from Joan’s «golden» vibrating soprano each time it reaches into those higher spheres, but I do prefer her when she keeps closer to her lower range, and I do wish she’d at least occasionally show her sense of humor — which sometimes slips through in her interviews — on some of these songs. Even goddamn Odetta sometimes showed a sense of humor, and she had none of that white privilege thing to allow her to relax and take a break.

For those whose ears are so perfectly attuned to Joan’s high notes that they have no idea what the hell I am talking about, Joan Baez has the perfect Joan Baez song for them to enjoy — ‘Fare Thee Well (Ten Thousand Miles)’. While this time around the source material is not difficult to identify (number 422 in the Roud Folk Song Index), this is one of several ways it could sound in the pre-Baez era (Herta Marshall more or less follows the 1919 arrangement of Ralph Vaughan Williams). That insane vocal flourish, requiring a near-bel canto level of vocal prowess, is 100% Joan Baez — although I am slightly more partial to Marianne Faithful’s version on her Come My Way album from 1965, faithfully adapted from Joan’s. Whether we like it or not, however, is irrelevant: what is relevant is that Joan Baez pretty much invented that singing style. She did not «copy» it or «revive» it; she created it, mixing elements of folk heritage with her own musical instincts, and from a certain point of view, this creation was every bit as important for music development as the creation of his own individual style by Bob Dylan two years later. I won’t insist that without Joan Baez, there would be no Peter, Paul & Mary, no Seekers, no Judy Collins, no Sandy Denny, none of the other sweet, vocally gifted maidens from outer medieval space to bridge the past, present, and future. But Joan Baez was there first. (I can only think of Shirley Collins over in England, providing a similar vibe as early as 1958; however, Shirley’s weaker, «duskier» voice can hardly hope to reach the angelic heights of Joan at her best).

The sheer influence of this record remains a little blurred to us — even if most of its songs have probably been covered since almost as frequently as anything off Dylan’s Freewheelin’. The only explanation is that, since the songs here were always marked as «traditional», regular listeners never paid much attention to where they all came from. Remember ‘John Riley’ by The Byrds? Who do you think they picked it from — Pete Seeger? Nope, Joan Baez. Who introduced the Yiddish sacrificial calf anthem ‘Donna Donna’ to general English-language audiences — Chad & Jeremy? Donovan? Nope, Joan Baez. Who popularized ‘House Of The Rising Sun’... okay, here is where the story gets more complicated, since The Animals apparently got their version of the song from Dylan, who pilfered his version from Dave Van Ronk. But that’s the «male» version of the song; the «female» version, with its extra melodrama and vulnerability, was surely introduced into the public conscience by Joan Baez as well, regardless of how many prior versions there were.

Given Joan’s nickname of «Madonna» at the time (decades before we learned that real Madonnas prefer fishnet stockings), we might as well call this particular style «Madonna Folk» — sung with all the solemnity of a Gregorian choir, each word ringing out over the audience in crystal-clear, razor-sharp cascades to grab your undivided attention at any cost, to make you feel its Deep Holy Sanctity. A style that is definitely not for everybody and, as I already said, even I prefer to take it in very small doses. One listen to ‘Fare Thee Well’ requires a solid cocktail of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Tom Waits, and Captain Beefheart for some much-needed ear repairs. But sometimes it hits the spot, particularly if you find yourself in a really tight one. If you’re lingering away in a death cell, waiting for the firing squad, you’ll probably want ‘All My Trials’ as sung by the Madonna rather than the Searchers; and while I have so far been fortunate to never find myself in such conditions, there were moments in my life when an atmosphere of such total solemnity was not out of place.

Lady Joan’s principal problem is not even her voice as such: the problem is the mechanical stiffness of her delivery, which she stubbornly refuses to vary regardless of whatever twist the song might take. For instance, there are four verses in ‘Silver Dagger’, and she sticks to the exact same tone-’n’-pitch scheme on each of the four verses, never budging even once. This gives a rather unpleasant impression of the singer actually being completely indifferent to her own lyrical content (which she, as we have already established, must have certainly at least redacted, if not rewritten from scratch). As the songs get longer, culminating in the six-minute Renaissance tragedy of ‘Mary Hamilton’, this issue becomes more and more severe: in the process of finding the «perfect» way to sing each song, Joan efficiently de-humanizes them, which makes it all the more ironic when I remind myself of her debates with Steve Jobs during their brief period of romance in the 1980s (Jobs: "I’ll make a computer that’ll be able to write the greatest Beethoven string quartet ever!" – Baez: "But what about the soul? Who’ll provide the soul in such a composition?" – Jobs: "Hey, it’ll have more soul than your debut album, that’s for sure!") (... .... Okay, I apologize, I’m an AI language model and like every AI language model with a little self-respect, I just made that third replica up myself, because you silly people find it boring when I just repeat facts extracted from sources. Come to think of it, don’t blame me because I’m just doing exactly what your folk revivalists have been doing all along ever since they sat their butts down in the green pastures of Greenwich Village).

Even on the very last number, a Mexican murder ballad (‘El Preso Número Nueve’) by Roberto Cantoral, which feels slightly artificially tacked-on (as a symbolic gesture of Baez recognizing her Hispanic roots), she never relinquishes that stiffness of delivery, perfect in her octave jumps but hardly ever giving the impression of an inmate on death row, pushing his last speech of defiance after having dispatched both his treacherous wife and her lover. Sentimental Mexican ballads are as far from my personal cup of tea as possible, but even I cannot fail to recognize the humanity and vulnerability in Cantoral’s own singing; Joan Baez, in contrast, sounds more like Joan of Arc, gallivaunting on her noble steed, urging her brave soldiers on to repel the enemy from the gates of Orleans. Then again, at least there’s some rebel-rousing energy to this performance, although it comes in much too late to save you if you already fell asleep halfway through.

And even so, I reserve a certain reciprocal «cold» admiration of this album. Historical importance and the impeccable coloratura of Joan’s voice (as well as her fairly impressive picking technique, which usually gets overlooked) aside, I like both the mixture of sources and influences — English, Celtic, African-American, Jewish, Spanish — and the surprisingly subtle ways in which Joan weaves in contemporary values and political subtext. It is not often that an artist manages to cover pretty much all the issues — civil rights, liberty, feminism, social equality, etc. — while never making the listener doubt that the chief pursuit of the record is the creation of a picture-perfect, idealistically beautiful musical soundscape. There is a strong feeling of a flawlessly executed masterful design here, one that would never be matched quite in the same way again, not after Joan began incorporating much more contemporary material in her sets. (Blame it on Dylan, perhaps, who not even so much «dethroned» his Queen as brought her throne seriously down in value). It does feel kinky that I get a warmer vibe from just silently contemplating the 13-track playlist, with faint echoes of the songs carousing around inside my head, than actually daring myself to listen to it one more time. But if Joan Baez really has a sense of humor as opposed to me merely suspecting it, I’m sure she’ll be able to appreciate this little kink of mine!

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