AMERICAN MASTERS: JOAN BAEZ: HOW SWEET THE SOUND (TV)
Summary
One in this series that explores the lives and achievements of America's most celebrated artists and performers. This episode is about folk singer/songwriter and political activist Joan Baez, tracing her fifty-plus years in the spotlight.
The program opens with footage of a young Baez stating her preference to be described first as a human being, second as a pacifist and third as a folk singer. In present day, Baez discusses the contrast between her public image and true self, then explores her early life and childhood. She recalls how her family moved a great deal during her teenage years and that she started out singing folk songs with her sister Mimi. After the family settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Baez became a regular singer at the Club 47 coffeehouse. Later, she “pretended” to attend college for several weeks, but abandoned it to pursue music and express her attraction to “sad, beautiful” songs.
Musician Roger McGuinn talks about the first time he saw Baez singing. Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, who collaborated with Baez professionally and personally, explains that she had a unique guitar-playing style which he could not duplicate. Baez says she was comfortable with her “court-jester role” as a lunchtime performer while briefly enrolled at Boston University. She states that before turning to folk songs, she was attracted to rhythm-and-blues. Musician David Crosby comments on her talent and style, as seen at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, after which she gained significant fame and became "the queen of folk music.”
Baez explains how she was “excited and frightened” when her first two albums became wildly successful, resulting in anxiety and onstage panic attacks. Baez then discusses performing in the South and learning that her contract had a “whites-only” audience clause, which she fought against. Reverend Jesse Jackson comments on her involvement with the fight for racial equality and civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked for Baez’s help in integrating schools in Granada, Mississippi, knowing her presence would help prevent violence. According to Jackson, Baez and King shared a “mutual admiration” and a commitment to non-violence.
Next, Baez recalls how she once protested an air-raid drill in high school as a result of her Quaker upbringing. Referring to her parents as “modern-day Gypsies” that always traveled the country, she tells how her family also lived in Baghdad, where they witnessed "horrific" poverty and racism. Baez discusses the influence of Mohandas Gandhi on her philosophy of life, and why she took part in the 1963 March on Washington -- where she got to see King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Next, Baez's relationship with Dylan is explored, starting with their meeting in 1961 and sharing roots in the same musical traditions. Crosby notes that Dylan was an esteemed poet who wrote his own songs, unlike Baez; she says she was attracted to Dylan's “strangeness” and his “mystique.” She invited him to play in concert with her and they became an “item.” However, the affair soured by 1965; she describes their tour in England as “hell,” citing the band's heavy drug use and the fact that the now-famous Dylan stopped inviting her to play with him. Dylan voices regret for their rift and says he was trying to “deal with the madness.”
Upon her involvement with Vietnam War draft protests, Baez was repeatedly arrested for encouraging draftees to resist. In 1967, she met David Harris, head of the draft resistance movement, and they had a “wartime romance.” The two married in 1968 and had a son, Gabriel, who was born while Harris served a 15-month prison sentence for draft evasion. Baez and Harris separated soon after his release, and she discusses her strengths and weaknesses as a mother. She says that she found it easier to have a relationship “with ten thousand people than with one,” and talks about the lack of balance within her life at the time, as explored in the song “Love Song to a Stranger.”
Baez was then invited to North Vietnam to help with the war resistance and was present during an eleven-day carpet bombing by the U.S., which she reinforced her sense of mortality. She talks about visiting the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the horrors that she witnessed in Vietnam.
Baez next traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, and found renewed success by recording a cover of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” She explains how her songs "choose" her, and then discusses “Diamonds and Rust,” which addresses her relationship with Dylan. She tells of joining Dylan on his Rolling Thunder Revue from 1975 to 1976, and concludes that the tour recordings show her “fun” side. Gabriel talks about his experience on the tour and his life as her son.
Crosby examines her humanitarian work in Cambodia and other countries, saying that she maintains an “ethical, moral stance in the world.” Lionel Rosenblatt, president of Refugees International, talks about his trip with Baez to Sarajevo in the mid-‘90s, where she met and performed with street cellist Vedran Smailovic. She admits to struggling with her experiences in the war-torn country. Baez also addresses the death of Mimi in 2001 from cancer. She states that her music has served as therapy over the decades in dealing with emotional pain.
Baez then tells of recording an album in 2008 as a “bookend” to the start of her fifty-year career, aided by friend and songwriter Steve Earle. He discusses how she frequently “reinvents herself” and appeals to many generations through her music and messages. The film closes as Baez talks about her love of touring, especially alongside Gabriel. She says she no longer suffers stage fright, as the “spirit” of the music is “all you need.”
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: October 14, 2009 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:24:24
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 100494
- GENRE: Documentary
- SUBJECT HEADING: Biography; Music, popular (songs etc.)
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1986-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Susan Lacy … Executive Producer
- Cliff Chenfeld … Executive Producer
- Craig Balsam … Executive Producer
- Julie Sacks … Supervising Producer
- Mark Spector … Producer, Writer
- Mary Wharton … Producer, Director, Writer
- Joyeux F. Noel … Associate Producer
- Michael Epstein … Consulting Producer
- Prudence Glass … Series Producer
- Anthony DeCurtis … Interviewer
- Thomas Wagner … Theme Music by
- Joan Baez
- David Crosby
- Bob Dylan
- Steve Earle
- Mimi Baez Fariña
- Mohandas Gandhi
- David Harris
- Gabriel Harris
- Jesse Jackson
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Roger McGuinn
- Lionel Rosenblatt
- Vedran Smailovic