Joan Baez 2 [Original recording remastered]

Joan Baez | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 14, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 1961
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Vanguard Records
• ASIN: B00005MKGN
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,366 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential...and improved!, March 17, 2002

By 

David A. Bede (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joan Baez 2 (Audio CD)

I don't suppose there are too many folk enthusiasts out there who are also audiophiles - besides myself, of course! - but this CD is a godsend to both camps. It's been too long since Baez's much-lauded "achingly pure soprano" sounded this good.

The songs themselves need no introduction. This is as traditional as traditional music gets, and Baez gives it a very traditional treatment, accompanying her singing only with a guitar or banjo, or not at all. If this spare production doesn't suggest itself for digital remastering, the results are stunning all the same. Every note of the fast and intricate guitar fill-in on "Lonesome Road" and the banjo solo on "Pal of Mine," among others, rings with a clarity that wasn't technologically feasible when this album was originally released in 1961 and which wasn't attempted on any previous reissue. Baez's vocal performances, if possible, sound even better as well. The three "bonus" tracks, while unnecessary given the improved quality of the more familiar songs, are nonetheless welcome. The gorgeous "I Once Loved a Boy" is a particularly pleasant surprise, but all three fit in well alongside the bulk of the album - an unusual case of bonus tracks improving a familiar album rather than hindering it.

Even if you think you know these songs by heart, this collection is essential to any fan of '60s folk music in its purest form. Even vinyl-purists owe it to themselves to hear this.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A revelation revisited, November 30, 2001

By 

Eric Stenclik (Buffalo, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joan Baez 2 (Audio CD)

I have been listening to this record for about 25 years, so when this newly engineered release came out I was eager to hear the new tracks. They are stunning. I Once Loved a Boy is especially tender and tinged with that slightly bitter, ineffable Joan Baez melancholy that no other singer I know of in folk music has captured. There is and has been no other voice like this in popular music. Listen to this CD and you will put down every other singer songwriter du jour for a long while. This is in another dimension.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greenbriar Boys and Joan, September 7, 2005

By 

Sheila Bloom "Norma" (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joan Baez 2 (Audio CD)

I love this album and have since it first came out. However, no one seems to have mentioned the inclusion of the Greenbriar Boys on Banks of the Ohio and Little Darling, Pal of Mine, with great guitar work by John Herald (who, sadly, recently died) and Ralph Rinzler, on mandolin and guitar. Those cuts have been played endlessly, both on my lp and the cd. It was Maynard Solomon who got Joan and the Boys to record together, and it was briliant. This is a great, great album by a superb artist and human being.