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Joan Baez: history has taught us to know her as an icon of pacifism and social commitment, as the "first lady" of folk, and as an exquisite performer: from "Barbara Allen" to "Blowin' In The Wind", countless unforgettable songs by big names in music as well as gems of popular tradition have been enhanced by the magical vocal cords of the Woodstock nightingale. However, Joan Baez is not merely a satellite shining with the reflected light of others' genius: "Sweet Sir Galahad" was the first spark, then the instant classic "Diamonds And Rust", and finally, in 1976, the first album composed entirely of originals, solely and exclusively penned by Joan Baez: "Gulf Winds" of 1976, sixteen years after her debut, is not one of her most well-known or celebrated works.
It is curious that Joan Baez's first singer-songwriter album (apparently) has little to do with what Joan Baez represents in the collective imagination: the then-thirty-five-year-old artist indulges in the luxury of a "glamorous" cover where, elegantly attired in her own way in candy pink, she poses smiling and tanned in a postcard-like tropical landscape. A small and exquisite stratagem to disorient the listener. The years of her relationship with Bob Dylan and Woodstock are long gone, and musically, too, "Gulf Winds" is an album in step with the times: electric, colorful, and lively, with a very personal sound, indeed containing some exotic atmospheres at a much deeper level than the cover might suggest, always with an eye to folk roots. Perfectly produced and packaged, the musical content is absolutely not inferior; no loss of style, no blank passages, only lots of inspiration in the nine songs of this album: for some of which can be undoubtedly termed masterpieces. "Seabirds", a restless tarantella with a vaguely twilight aftertaste, enriched by arrangements verging on perfection and with an enigmatic and almost schizophrenic text in its overlapping of images and personal reflections, perfectly aligned with the song's syncopated and mercurial rhythm. "Caruso" and "Kingdom Of Childhood", on the contrary, find their strength in the crystalline simplicity of the melodies, stretched, almost majestic and epic, they manage to create an extremely brilliant and timeless sound, with their solid folk-rock where Joan Baez's voice and acoustic guitar perfectly hold the scene, supported by masterful interventions of piano, synthesizers, and electric guitars. There are also evocative ballads like the sweet waltzes of "Still Waters At Night" and "Time Is Passing Us By" and the tormented piano ballads "Sweeter For Me" and "Stephanie's Room", where especially in the latter, the same ghost of "Diamonds And Rust" hovers; a ghost with a precise first and last name, also echoed in the lively and catchy "O Brother!", a response to a certain "Oh Sister" with which, however, it has little musically in common; a pleasant episode but perhaps the weakest of the album, which closes with "Gulf Winds": more than ten minutes long in which Joan relives her childhood; no special effects, just acoustic guitar and that intense and unmistakable vibrato, bringing life to a serene and evocative narrative, every two stanzas the chorus, always the same, almost a liberating mantra, drawing a perfect circle five times.
"Gulf Winds" remains to this day the only entirely "singer-songwriter" album by Joan Baez, and the success it garnered at the time was quite modest, yet it is a precious gem in every respect: the voice was already known, her talent as a musician had already emerged before, the real great surprise for an artist known mainly as an interpreter are the lyrics, stunning in all the episodes of the album; as she herself said about this album: "Sometimes, I wake up at night and write a song. Sometimes a tune comes to my head when I'm walking in the hills, and I have to make up words for it. Sometimes I sit in a bar in San Francisco and scribble into a notepad what I call my stream of unconsciousness. When I have enough scribbles in the pad, and enough tunes in my head, I go into the studio and make an album. That's how I made this one." This, in short, is Joan Baez of "Gulf Winds".
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Sweeter for Me (04:33)
(Words and Music by Joan Baez)
Red telephone sitting by my bed
Practically bore your name
Lying alone in the twilight zone
Waiting for your call to come in
Hadn't been for the kid
Who was sleeping upstairs
You'd have found me well on my way
On that midnight plane to L.A.
You suffered sweeter for me
Than anyone I've ever known
I dared to look into the years
Would you still have your wife?
I dared to peer through my tears
Could we ever have a life?
Even thought I was pregnant by you
But I didn't care
I just talked to my son
Would he mind another one?
You suffered sweeter for me
Than anyone I've ever known
Once more the mist rolls to the sea
Like a hundred times we've known
Trees are faded and the clouds have stopped
Where the wind had blown
How I dread when the evening comes
And I cannot be
What you want me to be
When you are next to me
How silent you are as the veils come down
Before my eyes
Soft and reserved as you move away
Donning your disguise
While every folk song that I ever knew
Once more comes true
And loves grows old
And waxes cold
You suffered sweeter for me
Than anyone I've ever known
Just one favor of you, my love
If I should die today
Take me down to where the hills
Meet the sea on a stormy day
Ride a ridge on a snow white horse
And throw my ashes away
To the wind and the sand
Where my song began
You suffered sweeter for me
Than anyone I've ever known
© 1976, 1977 Gabriel Earl Music (ASCAP)
03 Caruso (03:45)
(Words and Music by Joan Baez)
Infinity gives me chills
So could the waters of Iceland
But there's a difference in finding diamonds in rust
And rhinestones in a dishpan
Miracles bowl me over
And often will they do so
Now I think I was asleep till I heard
The voice of the great Caruso
Bring infinity home
Let me embrace it one more time
Make it the lilies of the field
Or Caruso in his prime
A friend of mine gave me a tape
She'd copied from a record disc
It was made at the turn of the century
And found in a jacket labeled "misc";
And midst cellos, harps, and flugelhorns
With the precision of a hummingbird's heart
Was the lord of the monarch butterflies
One-time ruler of the world of art
Bring infinity home
Let me embrace it one more time
Make it the lilies of the field
or Caruso in his prime
Yes, the king of them all was Enrico
Whose singular chest could rival
A hundred fervent Baptists
Giving forth in a tent revival
True he was a vocal miracle
But that's only secondary
It's the sould of the monarch butterfly
That I find a little bit scary
Bring infinity home
Let me embrace it one more time
Make it the lilies of the field
Or Caruso in his prime
Perhaps he's just a vehicle
To bear us to the hills of Truth
That's Truth spelled with a great big T
And peddled in the mystic's booth
There are oh so many miracles
That the western sky exposes
Why go looking for lilacs
When you're lying in a bed of roses?
Bring infinity home
Let me embrace it one more time
Make it the lilies of the field
Or Caruso in his prime
© 1976, 1977 Gabriel Earl Music (ASCAP)
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