The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #97870 Message #1931983
Posted By: Don Firth
09-Jan-07 - 11:26 PM
Thread Name: Joan Baez's birthday (9 January 1941)
Subject: RE: Joan Baez's birthday (9 January 1941)
Other than the two cuts with Bob Gibson on the 1959 Newport Folk Festival recording, Joan's first record (12" LP) came out in 1960. Then she put out one LP a year on the Vanguard label for several years running. I've heard that there was actually an earlier one, on some small label, where there were several singers, and she had a cut or two, but I've never heard it.
I first saw her live during the 1962 Seattle World's Fair when she sang an concert in the brand new Seattle Center Opera House to a full house of 3,100. A friend of mine got a wild idea and went backstage during intermission. He managed to thread his way through the crowd backstage and asked her if she would be interested in going to a small party, composed of a few Seattle folksingers, after her concert. He was sure she would turn him down, but she surprised him and said, "Yes." It seems she'd been in town for a couple of days, didn't know anybody here, and was feeling kind of lonesome. So Dave and I picked her up at the stage door and drove up to Dotty Broxon's house on Capitol Hill, where we knew a party was going on. The party had been going for awhile, but Dottie knew there was going to be an influx of people who had gone to the concert. Needless to say, walking into the party with Joan Baez was a bit of a coup!
She didn't sing at the party because she had already sung for nearly two hours and she felt like she might be on the verge of a cold, with more concerts to go, so she took it easy, but a lot of singing did go on.
Bob (Deckman) Nelson was there also (he, too, had gone to the concert), and after clearing it with his wife, he invited Joan to stay at the Nelson maison. At the time, he lived in Seattle's south end, and that would save her a long cab or shuttle-ride out to the Seattle-Tacoma airport in the morning. She checked out of her hotel and stayed the night with Bob and Norma, then Bob drove her to the airport and saw her onto the plane.
Then in 1964, at the Berkeley Folk Festival, after taking in one of the morning workshops, I was heading downstairs to go out for lunch when I bumped into (almost literally) a dark-haired young woman wearing a T-shirt, cut-offs, and sandals, coming up the stairs. It was Joan, on her way in to check on the arrangements for her concert that night. Darned if she didn't remember me from two years before. We chatted for a few minutes, then both went on our way.