JOAN BAEZ: The Last Leaf

The legendary mid-sixties partnership of Joan Baez with Bob Dylan, "the voice and the poet", is often thought to have been dominated by Dylan's musicianship and personality, but the author of this absorbing book suggests the opposite was true. Joanie rose to fame through her involvement with the civil rights movement, appearing on stage with Martin Luther King at the age of 17, and consolidating that success the following year, 1958, with her legendary performance at the Newport Folk Festival. When the family moved from California to the east, Joan enrolled at Boston University, though she was soon performing regularly at Club 47 which she helped to put on the map. She signed up with Vanguard rather than Columbia to avoid the glitter and fuss of the more established label, and colleagues remember Joan's sincerity and "unphoniness" in this early period. In the early sixties she was touring black colleges with unsegregated audiences, and in 1963 she started singing with Dylan, some of whose songs she had covered, at the Monterey Folk Festival. Their legendary Newport performance, preserved on grainy footage, established Dylan's stardom as it had Joan's four years earlier. Baez and Dylan continued to sing together in 1964, but in 1965 the cracks in their partnership became apparent, with jealousies arising and Dylan's insisting that he did not want to engage in active politics. In the late sixties Joan was arrested and imprisoned twice for protests over Vietnam, and with her sisters she modelled the poster "Girls say yes to boys who say no" - encouraging men to refuse the draft. At this time Joan married and became a mother. Baez continued to pursue a politically engaged career, visiting Sarajevo and other war zones, and giving her farewell concert in 2019. A fascinating read. 224pp, discography, black and white photos.