Latest Release

- JAN 24, 2025
- 15 Songs
- Diamonds & Rust · 1975
- Blessed Are... (Bonus Track Version) · 1971
- The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Live 1964 - Concert At Philharmonic Hall · 2004
- Any Day Now · 1968
- Joan Baez (Bonus Track Version) · 1960
- Farewell, Angelina (Bonus Track Version) · 1965
- Joan Baez (Bonus Track Version) · 1960
- Baez Sings Dylan · 1970
- Joan Baez 5 (Bonus Track Version) · 1964
- Baez Sings Dylan · 1998
Essential Albums
- It took until 1968 for Joan Baez to finally release an entire album of Bob Dylan songs. Recorded in Nashville (where Dylan had recorded several of his '60s albums with some of the same musicians), Any Day Now takes a country-folk look at his songs. "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word" is the lone song here not to eventually appear on a Dylan album. Some tracks are songs Dylan had written with The Band in West Saugerties, N.Y., in 1967 ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Tears of Rage," "I Shall Be Released") from what became frequently bootlegged and released as The Basement Tapes or appeared on The Band's Music from Big Pink. Other songs ("Drifter's Escape," "I Pity the Poor Immigrant," "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," "Dear Landlord") are from John Wesley Harding, Dylan's most recent album at the time. A few older underrated tunes ("North Country Blues," "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Restless Farewell") and a few obscurities ("Walls of Red Wing," "Walkin' Down the Line") make this a smart and unorthodox look at the most infamous songwriter of the '60s. This reissue adds two live cuts, "Blowin' in the Wind" and "It Ain't Me, Babe."
- The then-19-year-old's debut blew the dust from ballads hundreds of years old, making these ancient tales of murder, war, love, and revenge sound as vital as anything found in a newspaper headline, then or now. Recorded in just 4 days, the album sounds a lot like the live sets she was doing at the time, backed only by her own lovely, precise, often underrated guitar (an additional guitar appears on just a few tracks). The spare accompaniment makes the most of her gift: that startling soprano, piercing, pure, and almost unbearably clear.It's all quite unstylish these days — Baez is cool,formal, and sincere where we like our folksingers warm and intimate — but the power of the instrument can't be denied. And it's a mistake to see her innate elegance as detachment. In stunning interpretations of tunes like "Silver Dagger," "All My Trails," and the Child ballad "Mary Hamilton," Baez sounds sorrowful, tender, and bitter by turns, and her command of vocal dynamics — the way that voice can swoop from delicate to powerful in the course of a single phrase — makes these often stiff, stoic traditional songs unexpectedly expressive and moving.
- 1977
Music Videos
Artist Playlists
- A voice of rare beauty that could find tenderness and loss in unlikely places.
- The folk trailblazer's impact extends long past her '60s heyday.
- The enchanting power of her live show is captured in these tunes.
Singles & EPs
Live Albums
Appears On
- San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus & Dr. Timothy Seelig
About Joan Baez
Joan Baez’s distinctive voice served as a beacon amid the dramatic social upheaval of the ’60s. Born in New York in 1941, Baez was a rising star in the folk-revival boom—a singer who swiftly earned a reputation as a master interpreter, reinvigorating finger-picking standards like “House of the Rising Sun” with a haunted sense of melancholy and bracing vocal trills that successors like Joni Mitchell would eagerly adopt. She was also instrumental in bringing the songs of a young Bob Dylan to a wider audience, amplifying the graceful melodicism in tunes like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” that often gets overshadowed by his voice’s characteristic grit. Through her vocal advocacy of social justice, Baez became a countercultural icon without ever pandering to rock audiences, resolutely performing her set at Woodstock in a solo acoustic setup. And from the ’70s on, that fearlessness has manifested itself in increasingly eclectic records; Baez moved between country music, Spanish folk, and even sound collage, while also writing bittersweet ballads like 1975’s “Diamonds and Rust.” In the 21st century, her exploratory instincts have led her to cover the songs of modern-day outlaws like Steve Earle and Ryan Adams, reinforcing the spiritual connection among generations of roots radicals.
- FROM
- Staten Island, NY, United States
- BORN
- January 9, 1941
- GENRE
- Singer/Songwriter