By Gail Pennington POST-DISPATCH TELEVISION CRITIC 10/09/2009
In 1959, Joan Baez, "very young and very scared," faced what seemed to her like the largest crowd ever assembled: 15,000 people at the inaugural Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
"I was standing there with my little knees knocking, and I went up on stage, feeling as though I had been invited to my own execution. But instead of fainting or dying, I sang."
The performance "was very well received," Baez recalls, "and kind of sent me on my way from coffeehouses into a larger world of music."
And how. Baez, with her three-octave range and thrilling vibrato, became the queen of folk music at a time when folk was America's biggest music craze. But Baez saw her life as being about something bigger.
In between making gold records, Baez, the daughter of Quakers and a passionate advocate for human rights around the world, marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., prayed with residents of Hanoi during 11 days of carpet bombing in North Vietnam and saw her husband, David Harris, go to prison on draft-evasion charges. She performed for peace on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, sang in the strife-torn streets of Sarajevo and, most recently, serenaded Nelson Mandela on his 90th birthday.
"I'm at my happiest and healthiest when I'm very much wrapped up in politics," she says in "Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound," airing at 8 p.m. Wednesday on PBS' "American Masters." "Music plays a secondary role in my life."
Baez was in Newport, R.I., again this summer for the 50th anniversary of the folk festival and appeared by satellite when PBS introduced the special to TV critics meeting in Los Angeles. Even on two big screens, she looked vibrant and much younger than her 68 years.
And if her voice isn't as big and clear as it was in the 1960s and '70s, that's not much evident in "How Sweet the Sound," in which filmmaker Mary Wharton followed Baez on tour last year, seamlessly mixing scenes from 50 years ago with contemporary footage. The story is told without narration, in Baez's voice and in commentary from those close to her, including Bob Dylan and ex-husband Harris.
Baez was coy about Dylan when questioned this summer, deferring to "American Masters" executive producer Susan Lacy and saying she'd let the documentary speak for itself.
In fact, Dylan does a lot of speaking about Baez, describing the first time he heard her "heart-stopping soprano voice" and couldn't get it out of his mind.
Baez was already a star while Dylan was a scruffy, strange, street kid in the early 1960s when she began inviting him onstage during her concerts. Before long, "People got it, that he was pretty damn special," she says in the documentary.
They went on to become friends, lovers and adversaries. Her "Diamonds and Rust," a poignant but clear-eyed reflection on past love, was written about him, and he's proud of that, Dylan says in the documentary.
But "let's move on," Baez responded with curt humor when asked repeatedly about Dylan.
And move on she has.
Although still touring, with a Grammy-nominated CD, "Day After Tomorrow," Baez says she's relaxed a bit. She likes spending time with her mother, 96, and with her son Gabriel Harris, a percussionist who tours with her, and his wife, Pamela. She especially enjoys time with her granddaughter Jasmine.