, the book includes a comprehensive discography from Grammy-nominated music historian Arthur Levy. Thompson, a London-based journalist and lifelong Baez acolyte, is a contributor toConclusions on the Wall: New Essays on Bob Dylan,and the founder of The Village Trip, a New York-based festival that celebrates the rich musical history of Greenwich Village. In an excerpt ofbelow, Thompson tells the story of how Baez – on the cusp of fame – ended up on Vanguard Records.
There was an audience of some thirteen thousand in Freebody Park when Bob Gibson closed the show on Saturday, July 11. Joanie stood at the side of the stage in her Jesus sandals, “petrified” as she awaited his introduction. They sang two songs, the slow, almost languorous “Virgin Mary Had One Son,” which showcased Baez’s voice to perfection as it soared, almost ethereal, in harmony with Gibson’s.
As Baez headed home to Boston, the singer reflected on her moment. “I realised in the back of my mind and the center of my heart that in my book of destiny the first page had been turned,” she wrote a quarter-century later. Back at Club 47 the next week, lines snaked “right down the block and around two corners.”
Vanguard had been founded in 1950 by Maynard and his brother Seymour Solomon, left-wing Jewish intellectuals, with a loan of $10,000 from their father. They were both classical musicians and the first Vanguard release was, Bach’s twenty-first cantata. In the mid-fifties, with McCarthyism at its height, they signed Paul Robeson and The Weavers. All of that surely endeared Vanguard to Baez, but there was the additional attraction that Odetta was with the label.
joancbaez Elizabeth Thompson tells the story of how joancbaez – on the cusp of fame – ended up on Vanguard Records.
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