Joan Baez – Joan

More Folky Rock

  • Both sides of this vintage Stereo Vanguard pressing boast very good Hot Stamper grades
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • We run across a clean stereo copy of this album (the only ones that do justice to these complex arrangements as far as we’re concerned) maybe once a year, which why you rarely see it on the site
  • “In 1967, rock, folk, folk-rock, and pop all seemed to be headed in new and ever-more-ornate directions, and Joan was a response to that change and, not coincidentally, is also the most self-consciously beautiful record that Baez ever cut.”

*NOTE: Track 1 on side 1, “Be Not Too Hard,” plays in Mono.

This vintage Vanguard pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Joan Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

  • The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
  • The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1967
  • Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
  • Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
  • Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Shootout Criteria

What are sonic qualities by which a record — any record — should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.

Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.

Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

What We’re Listening For On Joan

  • Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
  • Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
  • The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
  • Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
  • Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
  • Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
  • Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Side One

Be Not Too Hard 
Eleanor Rigby 
Turquoise 
La Colombe – The Dove 
Dangling Conversation 
The Lady Came From Baltimore 
North

Side Two

Children of Darkness 
The Greenwood Side 
If You Were a Carpenter 
Annabel Lee
Saigon Bride

AMG Review

Joan was very much an album of its time in terms of its sound and production, more so than any other album that Joan Baez ever recorded. In 1967, rock, folk, folk-rock, and pop all seemed to be headed in new and ever-more-ornate directions, and Joan was a response to that change and, not coincidentally, is also the most self-consciously beautiful record that Baez ever cut.

Arranger/conductor Peter Schickele, who had previously worked with Baez on her Christmas album, provides generally restrained orchestral accompaniment on ten of the 12 songs here. The latter, in sharp contrast to Baez’s earlier work, are mostly drawn from a wide range of such popular composers as John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Donovan, Paul Simon, and Jacques Brel, as well as Tim Hardin and Baez’s late brother-in-law, Richard Farina.

Several of these tracks — “Turquoise” with its gorgeous parts for the harps and the horns, “Children of Darkness” with its beautiful writing for the reeds, and “Saigon Bride” with its haunting brass part — are profoundly beautiful.