Album Reviews

If Travelling On With The Weavers is the original “Kumbaya Moment,” this live album recorded in 1962 is the “Kumbaya Follow Up Moment.” The first live concert I every attended was Joan Baez at Town Hall in New York City in 1962 or 3. I was in high school but until that night, had never seen unshaven legs and armpits. I mean on girls. I'd never seen moustaches before, either and again I mean on girls. But there they were! Loitering in the balcony foyer. I can still smell the Patchouli oil and what lurked just beyond. Maybe I was just imagining that.

So Joan Baez was all of 21 years old when this was recorded. She sounds so mature for 21 when she speaks between songs. When she sings, well that's either something you respond to, or it's chaulk on a blackboard time.

I know people like that but I'm not one of them. When I was exposed to that quavering voice back in 1960 at summer camp, it was an instant attraction. So pure, so pitch perfect, such control. And what a vibrato! Baez's guitar playing was equally evocative and delicate.

Yet in retrospect, listening to this fabulous-sounding Cisco reissue, I find myself hearing someone who was probably really nervous, substituting an odd brand of sonic “beauty” for a genuine display or mutable emotions. While the voice was a thing of beauty and perfection-a soaring, bell toned instrument-behind it lay a vast emptiness that only time, experience and living was capable of filling in. The later Baez, with the thicker, more mature voice, even the current Baez, contains a far more expressive instrument.

Nonetheless, what the performance lacks in true emotional expressiveness is compensated for by the sheer beauty, power and bell-toned perfection of the 21 year old's vocal chords. And the guitar accompaniment is no less accomplished.

Thanks to the purity and simplicity of the Vanguard engineering team's recording rig, the sound is just plain thrilling. It's just Baez and her guitar center stage, plus thunderous applause between songs, but it's so effectively captured, listening is like being transported in a time capsule back to 1962. It has the magic of Belafonte at Carnegie Hall or The Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall , though with less sonic variety.

The highlights on side one are “Geordie,” a tragic, traditional ballad about a theft, a hanging and a woman's loss and Malvina Reynold's pollution protest song “What Have They Done to the Rain?” The low point is “Kumbaya,”which Baez takes at a sluggish, pace. Her portentous intro sets the wrong tone and she never recovers from it.

Side two offers a far better mix of songs including “Gospel Ship,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” and “Matty Groves.” Having spent many an afternoon listening to an original pressing of this back in 1962 on Koss Pro-4A headphones, hearing it again all these years later on this superb sounding reissue, brought back golden memories of those times, and of how this record so affected and mesmerized me in my youth. Your reaction may be different.