There's no need for anger, there's no need for blame

Starting my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

19/12/65 : Farewell, Angelina - Joan Baez


Finally, we get to meet Ms Baez! Considering how much we've had to endure Bob Dylan and others from that era, it seems bizarre that she's somehow eluded us for all this time. Part of it's just luck because she had four top ten albums in '64 and '65 and I'm only just getting round to one of them - but I also suspect that her gender probably didn't always help her get the recognition she might have deserved. Either way, I'm looking forward to it!

Yeah, this is pretty much up my street. Her voice is lovely (if a bit too vibrato at times for my liking) and the songs are all at least perfectly pleasant. Sometimes the arrangements are maybe a bit too simple, but I actually preferred that to some of the overly fiddliness that Joni MItchell often gives us. I particularly liked the title track and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" which were both lovely versions of Bob Dylan songs and "Wild Mountain Thyme" because I remember my mum, who is a massive Joan Baez fan, singing it. I wasn't such a fan of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" because it's just too long at 7:36 and so needs something like Bob's histrionics or Bryan Ferry's shenanigans (and Bryan gets extra brownie points because he shortens it as well). But overall, this album is pretty much my cup of tea - I liked it.

We're at #5 in the charts this week on her fifth week of a decent fourteen week run, with #5 being as high as it got for four consecutive weeks - it also managed a nine week run later in '66. The rest of the top five were The Beatles' Rubber Soul,  The Sound Of Music, Mary Poppins and The Beatles' Help! and there were two new entries in the chart for the amazingly similar The Who (#19) and Ken Dodd (#20). 

Wikipedia tells us it's her sixth album and continues her shift away from the traditional folk music she started off with - she's even got some electric guitar on this! They're all covers or traditional songs, with four Dylan numbers and Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Donovan being the other names I recognise. It also tells us that the album cover photo was taken by Richard Avedon, who was a big name for a long time in the fashion photography world. Back to the music, the album was critically well received and it did well commercially both here and in the US.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" which is the second time that's happened this year which is starting to get suspicious. I liked this album a lot and it feels musically quite significant because I can't recall any earlier album we've met having that female singer-songwriter kinda vibe to it (even if I have to accept that she didn't actually do with songwriting here).

12/12/65 - Very dated
26/12/65 - A fine start to the year

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