Customer Reviews

How Sweet The Sound

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At long last! Those of us who've followed Joan Baez' career (some since her beginning 50 years ago at the Newport Folk Festival) have watched her evolve into a legend in the folk music genre, an iconic figure with unparalleled skills as singer/songwriter, musician, and interpreter of some of the most beautiful and evocative folk, country, blues and rock songs ever written. We've bought her albums, then her cassettes, then her cd's, but we've also watched, listened and read about her efforts on behalf of the most vulnerable, war torn, disenfranchised and persecuted throughout the world.

Joan has stood with only her guitar and her clear, luminous voice braving dictators and bullies, military henchmen and bigoted thugs who would try to silence her from speaking or singing, determined to bring comfort and solace where she could, and hope and inspiration where she might. She has sung, marched, written about and simply been present at some of the seminal events of the past century; she has seen the triumphs and tragedies close up.

And finally this remarkable life has been documented with a depth befitting the woman who has quite rightfully become known as the Queen of Folk! The PBS 'American Masters' film takes us inside Joan's family, provides unprecedented access to friends and colleagues, and reveals the influences for her activism and her music---all candidly intimate and not always flattering, but never less than fascinating and sometimes funny, often poignant and always enthralling.

I would urge anyone who is familiar with and appreciates Ms. Baez' music to see this extraordinary documentary, and enjoy the splendid music included within the film that traverses her career from its very beginnings to her most recent release, produced by Steve Earle. It's been a long time coming, but it's here at last...THANK YOU, Joan Baez, PBS and the producers and filmmakers for this wonderful tribute!

The producers of American Masters certainly have a knack for capturing the life stories of America's most important artists.

Early in this wonderful new documentary, Joan Baez states that many people tell her that they have known her music all their lives, yet many also confess that they know little about her, beyond her music. This statement did not strike me as odd; I needed only think about it for a brief moment, and I knew that it was true for me as well. Although I have loved and listened to the music of this incredible singer for over thirty years, admittedly far less than her stellar 50-year career, I confess that I had never really known much about her life. There were snatches of knowledge along the way - I knew that she was a tireless advocate of human rights, and I knew that her husband, David Harris, was jailed for inciting draft evasion shortly after they were married. I also knew that she had had a brief romantic fling with Bob Dylan. But, biographically speaking, that was where my knowledge of her ended. Although I have owned some of her earliest records for a very long time, I knew little about her career, family life or even her involvement in politics, although, of course, I had gleaned some of her activism just from her choice of material.

The film, which runs a little under 90 minutes, reflects a great deal of private and public information about Ms. Baez of which I was previously unaware. It also contains numerous clips of the early career, and the full story of her early triumphs. Some secrets are revealed; she speaks candidly about the stage fright that plagued many of her early performances, an affliction that no one was aware of. She comes across as humble and passionate as one would expect, yet the full breadth of her achievements were something that I, for one, had never really stopped to think about. Wherever there were downtrodden people in trouble, Joan Baez was there, lifting her gorgeous soprano in support and concern, and if any one attribute emerged above all others in this candid and interesting portrait, I would have to say it was her bravery. Although I was aware of her involvement with the civil rights movement, it came as an impressive surprise to learn that she was counted among Martin Luther King's closest personal friends. The newsreel footage of her personally escorting small black children into a segregated school in the heart of KKK territory, Grenada Mississippi, was heartbreaking and uplifting. The film clips of her singing, "We Shall Overcome" to the throngs assembled to hear Dr. King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech were both thrilling and enlightening.

The film covers all of Joan Baez' career, much of her activism, and incorporates contemporary interviews with her and her peers, including Bob Dylan, her ex-husband, David Harris and her son, Gabriel Harris, among several others. When she speaks of the death of her beloved sister, Mimi Fariña, I was extremely moved.

I can't recall ever watching a more satisfying or entertaining musical documentary, save perhaps the excellent American Masters bio of Ella Fitzgerald, Something to Live For. My only quibble with Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound is that, unlike the Ella Fitzgerald film, nowhere in the numerous but brief film clips is there a complete performance of a single song; it would have been nice if the producers had thought to include a complete musical number or two as extra features, However, this is not to say that the film does not deserve the five stars I award it here; the focus of this wonderful biography is to shed some information on Ms. Baez' life and career; those who are interested in her music have a plethora of albums to choose from.

On the whole, I enjoyed every single minute of this film, and it is highly recommended.

I've just finished watching this DVD and I still have goose bumps. I own a lot of Joanie material, including TV performances from the early sixties but this here is the real deal. Pretty similar to the Dylan documentary "No direction home", we have material we didn't even know existed (an incredibly young Joanie singing "Barbara Allen" at the Club 47 in Cambridge in 1959 or 60 for instance) plus comments from the obvious companions such as Roger McGuinn and David Crosby as well as her former husband David Harris and their son Gabe. And then there's Dylan himself, finally acknowledging the influence Joan had on him and admitting that everybody, including himself, were trying to play guitar like her and sing her songs. We have Martin Luther King standing in front of the prison gates where Joanie was being kept for supporting draft resisters, voicing his support for her. She admits some things she appears to have never mentioned before, e.g. how she would stop in the middle of songs due to a sudden attack of stage fright and leave the stage only to reappear minutes later and pick up where she'd left off. And, she says, nobody ever talked to her about that, because they were all so sympathetic and didn't want her to feel embarrassed. It is so good to see that she has aged well and that her songs still move me. We see her sitting in the studio in the summer of 2008 with Steve Earle picking his acoustic guitar and Joan learning "God is God" and then he says "I wrote that one for you" and she is very moved.
For viewers who are not familiar with the unreleased Dylan-Baez material the duets, most notably the carnival type Rolling Thunder Revue version of "I pity the poor immigrant" will open up a whole new world. The Dylan-Baez collaborations are so inspired and right on. Dylan himself says that they blended perfectly and he was sorry to see their relationship end.
The DVD also has bonus tracks, interviews with fellow civil rights activists, with Steve Earle and Dar Williams, whose career didn't really take off until Joan took her on tour and recorded her songs.
Toward the end everything gets very fast, we have three minutes of Joan in Sarajevo, three minutes about the death of her sister and their relationship, three minutes about Joan in Cambodia in the 1980s, maybe it would have been advisable not to try and pack almost seventy years into one hour and fifty minutes. It took Scorcese three and a half hours to tell Dylan's story. Joan would have deserved as much time. So I'm requesting a director's cut :)

A very moving look at Joan Baez' life in song,starting with s brief look at her childhood and the idealism of her father but then progressing quickly to the beginning of her singing career. Great insights into her early days with Dylan, her involvement with the civil rights and anti-war movements, her marriage - all with the benefit comments from the present from the still gracious, still beatiful Joan. But best of all are the songs - both old and new

This DVD is made for those who lived the courage and idealism of the 1960s and long to pass that message to the current generation of young people lamentably lacking in both. Perhaps today they don't know how, because they have not seen how it has been done. YES IT CAN even without drugs and promiscuous sex. HOW SWEET THE SOUND presents a complete portrait of Joan Baez from idealism to disappointments, even into the wisdom she possesses in her sixties. Heroes to me are not those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but those driven by their convictions and who willingly place their bodies at risk because of them. Count Joan among them; may young people follow her example in this.
Rev. James L. Meyer, MA, JD (Published Author)

I've been a JB fan for as long as she's being singing, and frankly I didn't expect much from the DVD. But I was wrong. It is wonderful, all new footage (including home movies from her childhood), time with MLK, Dylan, David Harris, and many more. It was produced to juxtapose her today (close to 70 years old - and still beautiful) to her early adult years when she emerged as Queen of Folk Music.
The accompanying CD has some of her tracks, esp. her older acoustic one, plus a few not-previously-released ones. It really took years off my life, remembering the 60's.
But I was thinking that Baez' legacy is with the younger generation who will be inspired by this DVD. Her courage and political activism and her clear crystal voice is a combo that is lacking today. This DVD is as much inspiration as it is "entertainment."
I fell in love with Joanie all over again. Buy It!!!

What a pity to have collected so wonderful pieces of music of this legend singer, and to permanently cover her music with plenty of verbiage without interest, with a few exceptions of some short films and part of Joan herself interview.
Why not to have a separate track for only the music band - that you would like to enjoy many times - and one for the comments and interview - that you will listen to only once (maximum)? instead of this frustating mix.