Baez returns to Tuscaloosa for 1st concert since 1960s
http://www.theledger.com/article/20080411/APE/804110955
April 11, 2008
olk singer and activist Joan Baez prepared for a sold-out performance
in Tuscaloosa by recalling a trip to the city in 1961 when the
audience was all white and civil rights campaigns were growing.
Her Friday night concert was part of the Bama Theatre's 70th
anniversary celebration, marking her first appearance in the city
since the 1960s.
In 1961, Baez sang "We Shall Overcome," the song that became the
anthem of the civil rights era, but segregation was the law at the time.
On that night, she recalled, "there were no blacks in the audiences.
They weren't allowed. So I thought 'harumph, harumph, we'll see about that.'"
On her next swing through the South, in 1964, Baez called the NAACP
and arranged a tour playing historically black colleges and schools.
"One time I performed during a rainstorm, and the facility was so
badly maintained that the rain was simply leaking in on the people's
heads," she told The Tuscaloosa News in a story Friday. "That was a
stronger statement than any I could have made.
"Those shows could be a little hairy, moreso for the people that were
there, because I got to pack up and leave afterward."
It was during that tour that she came through Tuscaloosa again and
played Stillman College's Birthright Auditorium on April 3, 1964.
Pictures of Baez singing and talking with Stillman students appeared
in the college's 1965 yearbook, The Stillmanite, which described an
"awe-stricken audience."
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Joan Baez
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20080411/TUSK02/974790282/-1/tusk
By Mark Hughes Cobb
Tusk Editor
April 11, 2008
You don't have to know Joan Baez's extensive discography by heart to
conjure up a few quick associations: Folkie. Woodstock. Activist.
Closely followed by Woodstock, Bob Dylan, 'Diamonds and Rust' and
'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.'
So it doesn't take a brain trust to assume that she's not going to
siphon off a lot of the folks who would have been seeing Alan Jackson
tonight, had that A-Day concert not fallen through.
And it's reasonable to assume that something of the spirit of the
rebellious, revolutionary '60s will be revived with her concert at
the venerable Bama Theatre, which is celebrating the 70th anniversary
of its opening with this concert.
'I'm most comfortable and interested in what I'm doing when it's
involved in something beyond a musical concert,' Baez said in a phone
interview. 'I was born that way. My biggest gift was the voice, my
second biggest was the desire to share it, to speak on behalf of the
people who couldn't be heard.'
It's her first concert in Tuscaloosa since 1964, when she played
Stillman College in defiance of segregationist policies of the time.
Forty-four years have passed, and the South has changed, as has Baez.
Her once-raven mane is now a close-cropped gray. But reports are her
three-octave soprano is still sterling, though, at 67.
While young people and other idealists have been predicting a return
of the '60s for decades, Baez has grounded hopes in these times that
seem to be slowly, finally a-changin'.
'The large elephant on the table would be if I didn't mention the
current elections and so on, because I've been really swept off my
feet by Obama,' she said. 'I haven't felt that kind of joy since the
civil rights movement.'
Baez remembers when civil rights activists such as Andrew Young and
Ralph Abernathy anointed a young preacher named Martin Luther King
Jr. to take the lead.
'Somehow it landed on Martin. I think it had to do with his absolute
faith in nonviolence,' Baez said. 'I sense that potential with Obama.
I don't know what makes these things happen, but I know people have
been waiting for something to happen; it just has to be like the
perfect storm.'
All that said, Baez intends to perform a concert, not a rally. 'All I
need to do is say four or five words; I don't need to preach,' she said.
The band will include three backing musicians pulling from a
repertoire spanning 50 years, including a couple of songs from an
album she just finished in Nashville, produced by Steve Earle.
'In concert, I try to pick out different styles and different years;
I want them to move smoothly from one to the next,' she said.
'Sometimes you have a song and a substitute. Sometimes if a night is
really flying, if I need the band to leave for a while because I'm
feeling some inspiration, they do.'
There's usually a segment where she plays solo, and the concerts run
from 90 minutes to two hours, she said, depending on the groove.
The other elephant in the room would be singing 'The Night They Drove
Old Dixie Down' in the Deep South at a time when a highly debated war
divides the country. She's even thought of leaving it out of her
shows, but realized that's a no-no.
'I understand how audiences feel about it, because I feel it with
other artists: 'Oh why doesn't he sing so and so?' So sometimes I
sing it a cappella, get the band to sit out, or get the audience to
sing it,' she said.
Both her version and the original, by The Band, are well known,
although hers was the bigger radio hit, peaking at No. 3 in 1971.
It's also been covered by artists as varied as Dylan, Johnny Cash,
Richie Havens, the Black Crowes, the Decemberists, The Allman
Brothers and Jerry Garcia.
Baez's varies slightly because she learned the song by ear and
misheard a few of the lyrics; for instance, she misunderstood
'Stoneman's cavalry' to be 'so much cavalry.' Changing the line
'There goes Robert E. Lee' to 'there goes the Robert E. Lee' suggests
the steamboat, not the general.
But it's little matter, because the despair of the song rings
through. Canadian Robbie Robertson, a fan of the bitter lyricism of
Tennessee Williams, wrote it in response to hearing Southerners
repeat 'The South's gonna rise again.' He heard the pain and
'beautiful sadness' of a defeated land.
'I usually don't talk about the origins; I usually talk about
something else and that leads into the song,' Baez said. 'Something
like 'Dixie,' it just sounded anti-war.'
Responses to it vary. Some hear a dark romance of the old South, with
ragged pride even in defeat. Others dig into Robertson's dense
metaphor: The singing narrator is Virgil Caine; with the Civil War
often referred to as the war between brothers, the Biblical reference
is obvious. Lines such as 'And I swear by the mud beneath my feet/You
can't raise a Cain back up when he's in defeat' suggest a measured
response to that much-heard 'rise again' phrase.
'All the people who have the flag-waving feeling about it seem to be
dying off,' Baez said. 'Now it's just a memory for people.'
There are other tunes she will undoubtedly play, like 'Diamonds and
Rust,' her 1975 hit supposedly written about her tempestuous affair
with Dylan, though in her memoir 'And a Voice to Sing With,' she says
it was about her husband David Harris while Harris was in prison.
'With 'Diamonds and Rust,' I just like to hear the sound of my own
voice,' Baez said, laughing.
Others that will likely pop up include hits such as 'There But For
Fortune,' 'Sweet Sir Galahad' and iconic songs such as 'Joe Hill' and
'We Shall Overcome.'
'Those are the chestnuts. The rest we just sift around. Sometimes
somebody will shout out a song I haven't done in 20 years, and we'll
give it a try.'
For the new album, she's covering a couple of new songs by Earle, and
his earlier tune 'Jericho Road.' She's also covered Tom Waits' 'Day
After Tomorrow' and Elvis Costello's 'Scarlet Tide.'
'I haven't written in a long time, but we have found some magnificent
songs that sound more like the early things,' she said.
Mixing in the new or unknown songs in concert has to be done
judiciously, she said, 'because I don't like the feeling of people
toe-tapping and wishing I'd get back to their favorites, so I try to
do stuff that'll keep them for 3 1/2 minutes. I'll sometimes say
something like 'Hang on,' ' she said, laughing.
Although her audience has aged with Baez, she's noticed a growing
younger crowd over the past 10 or 15 years.
'As much as we would all like to pretend that we're young, there's
some kind of reassurance with people who come in with hair like
mine,' she said. 'The fact is the people who've been coming to the
concerts for the last 40 years, I owe them a lot.'
--------
Joan Baez returns to sold-out concert
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20080411/NEWS/453062549/-1/LINKS
Tonight will be her first desegregated show here
By Mark Hughes Cobb
Staff Writer
April 11, 2008
Tonight's performance by musician Joan Baez is not the first time the
folk singer and activist passed through Tuscaloosa.
That was back in 1961, when Baez sang "We Shall Overcome," the song
that became the anthem of an era rife with marches, protest and violence.
But none of the local black heroes such as Autherine Lucy, T.Y.
Rogers, Thomas Linton, Vivian Malone, James Hood or others would have
heard her. That concert was for whites only.
"I remember the 1964 tour, because it followed the first time I went
into the South, in '61," said Baez, who will perform in Tuscaloosa
for the third time tonight in a sold-out concert as part of the Bama
Theatre's 70th anniversary celebration.
In 1961, she recalled, "there were no blacks in the audiences. They
weren't allowed. So I thought 'harumph, harumph, we'll see about that.'"
On her next swing through the South, Baez called the NAACP and
arranged a tour playing historically black colleges and schools.
"One time I performed during a rainstorm, and the facility was so
badly maintained that the rain was simply leaking in on the people's
heads," she said. "That was a stronger statement than any I could have made.
"Those shows could be a little hairy, moreso for the people that were
there, because I got to pack up and leave afterward."
It was during that tour that she came through Tuscaloosa again and
played Stillman College's Birthright Auditorium on April 3, 1964.
A memorable night
Willita Zoellner, then Goodson, was in the first row, with her
husband and two sons. At the time, she said, their car had no radio,
so when the family traveled they would sing together, learning from songbooks.
One pocket-sized pink edition, titled "One in Song," included tunes
from 24 countries representing "work songs, love songs, marches,
songs of dedication and prayers." At that concert, Baez signed her
autograph atop Page 4, which contains the song "We Shall Overcome."
"I asked my son Nathan to take it up to her after the performance,"
Zoellner said. "[Baez] said, 'Where did you get this?'"
She laughed, recalling how her son sheepishly replied, "My mama."
Zoellner remembers Baez singing Appalachian folks songs, English
carols and other traditional pieces, along with folk blues such as
"House of the Rising Sun." Baez was already a rising star, having
scored a hit with her version of "We Shall Overcome" in 1963. But
that was a year before she charted "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and
"There But for Fortune," and several years before her biggest
successes, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Diamonds and Rust."
Pictures of Baez singing and talking with Stillman students appeared
in the college's 1965 yearbook, The Stillmanite, which described an
"awe-stricken audience."
"Joan's long black hair draped her plain but beautiful face as her
penetrating voice filled the concert hall. Our Westminster Gospel
Choir accompanied her as she sang such old-time favorites as 'All My
Trails' and 'We Shall Overcome,' " the caption reads.
A risky undertaking
Zoellner remembers the concert as a success, both aesthetically and morally.
"It was really dangerous for whites and blacks to gather at the
time," Zoellner said.
Fellow anti-segregationist friends had had a vicious hate note
wrapped around a rock thrown through their window. Vociferous verbal
threats were a daily occurrence.
While blacks suffered the heaviest brunt of the anger, white
activists in Alabama suffered as well: Viola Liuzzo, a mother of
five, was shot to death in Selma after a march, apparently by KKK
members, one of them an FBI informant. Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an
Episcopalian seminarian, was shot dead outside a Hayneville jail,
having spent six days under arrest for picketing whites-only stores.
Tuscaloosa activists frequently thought of simply leaving the South.
"Some people moved away, but we said, 'If we stay, think about how
much more difficult it would be for the Klan,' " Zoellner said.
Following the example of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the
Goodsons and their friends worked for nonviolent change, taking part
in marches and protests. Longtime artist and arts advocate Doris
Leapard worked with UA choral professor Fred Prentice to create the
Tuscaloosa Community Chorus, the city's first integrated arts group.
"Some people quit speaking to us, and others were ugly to our
children. But we all thought it was worthwhile," Zoellner said. "We
did what we could."
Many of those activists were among those gathered at Birthright
Auditorium in 1964 to listen, peacefully, as Baez thrilled them with
her signature three-octave soprano, singing songs of love, march,
dedication and prayer. It wasn't the pinnacle of the civil rights
movement, it wasn't its beginning or end; it was just a lovely grace note.
--------
From Activist to Active Performer
Oxford is just one stop on Joan Baez's 50th anniversary tour
Lindsey Phillips
Issue date: 4/10/08
Oxford will get a taste of history Saturday night when iconic folk
songstress and political activist Joan Baez, celebrating her 50th
year of professional performing, takes center stage at the Gertrude
C. Ford Center.
Baez is celebrated for both her three-octave singing range, dubbed by
early critics as "achingly pure soprano," and her involvement in the
civil rights movement, anti-war efforts and politically-charged songs
demanding equal rights and social change.
"She's always very much been an activist," Kate Meacham, assistant
director of marketing for the Ford Center, said. "She has been very
much involved in equal rights, anything where she felt people weren't
being treated correctly."
Baez, who has been called the Queen of Folk, the Barefoot Madonna and
Peace Queen, made her professional debut at the Newport Folk Festival
in 1958 at the age of 18 and soon became deeply involved in the
nonviolent civil rights movement.
Three years after the release of her first record, Baez led about
350,000 people in a rendition of "We Shall Overcome" during the 1963
Civil Rights March on Washington. Baez was also involved in many
other political issues, including the anti-Vietnam war effort.
Nancy Dupont, assistant professor of journalism at Ole Miss, said she
recalls watching the march on television and felt moved by both the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's "I had a dream" speech and the musical
performances.
"I remember very vividly the music that was played there, and Joan
Baez performed with Bob Dylan," she said. "Even though I was very
young, I really had a sense that changes were coming in the American
way of life. It was a real pivotal moment for me to watch that."
Baez is also known for her musical and romantic relationship with Bob
Dylan. Over the years the two played together multiple times and
regularly performed each other's music. Baez is credited with
introducing Dylan, who at the time was largely unknown on the music
scene, at one of her concerts, Meacham said.
"She's a legend," Meacham said. "There is history with her, but also
I think she's a great show. She's got a wonderful voice."
Baez has released more than 45 recordings in the U.S., including
multiple compilations, and in 2007 received a Lifetime Achievement
Grammy Award. She remains an activist and an artist, and is working
on a new album, expected out this year.
The Ford Center booked Baez a couple of weeks ago after plans to
perform in another area didn't work out, but the show has had
"strong" ticket sales given the short notice, Meacham said.
"They've (people in the community) been very excited about it," she
said. "She has a very dedicated following and not necessarily people
who were young when she was."
Aspen Nero, a freshman biology major from Bay St. Louis, said she
plans to attend the concert. Nero said she became interested in Baez
after hearing her on vinyl.
"I've heard a lot of the stuff with her and Bob Dylan, and I really
liked it," she said. "It's (the concert) just a great opportunity."
Dupont said she is also looking forward to the show.
"I really think Joan Baez is part of my youth," she said. "I think
she was a poet of my generation. I think it took a lot of courage for
her to step forward when she did in calling for changes in America."
The show starts Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Ford Center. Tickets are
$27 and are available at the Student Union and Ford Center box
offices. They will also be on sale at the door the night of the
concert. Baez's publicists were unavailable for comment.
--------
Joan Baez leaves 'em wanting more
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/040908/lif_266448041.shtml
Singer's concert Monday at Florida Theatre mixes surprises with classics.
By ROGER BULL, The Times-Union
4/9/2008
Joan Baez has aged well.
Monday night at the Florida Theatre, she sounded superb.
The voice has obviously changed over the years. No longer is it so
perfect and pure, but personally, I thought it was a bit too pure
back then. Now it is much more textured and much more human.
But her throat was clearly giving her trouble. She had to cancel two
concerts last week. Monday night, she had a scarf wrapped around her
neck and appeared to suck on a lozenge or two.
Her voice broke a time or two, particularly during an a capella Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot. But that was just fine.
Unfortunately, it seemed like she had to shorten the show. She was on
stage for an about an hour and 20 minutes before she waved good
night, and the lights came on. I could have used another hour, and
reviews from other shows on her current tour mention about a
half-dozen songs that went unsung Monday.
But the crowd enjoyed every bit of it.
About 800 tickets were sold, filling most of the downstairs. But
there are not many Joan Baezes in the world to see, and I expected a
bigger crowd. Rather than aging hipsters, the crowd was just aging.
After all, Baez is 67 and emerged on the scene as a teenager, so a
lot of her fans are going to be well into their 70s.
She was backed by a simple guitar, bass and drums and started right
into classic folk with Fennario and then made Elvis Costello's
Scarlet Tide sound like classic folk.
Amid expected tunes such as Woody Guthrie's Deportees and her own
Diamonds and Rust, she threw in a few surprises, from Sam Cooke's
poppy Wonderful World, not to mention taking Bob Dylan's nasal tones
for one of the verses in Love Is Just a Four Letter Word.
Her feeling for causes was never far away, and Steve Earle's
Christmas in Washington and Jerusalem were as effective as anything
she sang in the early '60s.
Almost as enjoyable as the songs were her few stories about marching
with Martin Luther King Jr. and about stealing songs from Dylan.
Like I said, I could have used another hour of it.
--
roger.bull@jacksonville.com,
(904) 359-4296
.
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