Joan Baez - Diamonds & Rust 50th Anniversary Joan Baez

Originally issued on A&M Records in 1975, Diamonds & Rust marked a change in direction for Baez; it gave her songs of the heart and politics an unashamedly commercial veneer, returning her to the US Top 20 for the first time in four years.

This re-issue, released to mark the album's 50th anniversary, faithfully replicates the original A&M UK release and is pressed on 180g vinyl.

If people were unaware of the significance of Joan Baez to western culture, her portrayal in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (played by Monica Barbaro) underlines how central she was to the popularization of folk music in the early 1960s.
And it is her decade- previous relationship with Dylan that hovers joyously over Diamonds & Rust.

The title track is about a thinly disguised ex-lover who calls up out of the blue; it remains one of her most loved songs in a 65- year- career.
There's a playful cover of "Simple Twist Of Fate" from Dylan's then just released Blood On The
Tracks, complete with impersonation in a later verse; and "Winds Of The Old Days", written in response to Dylan touring again after a lengthy hiatus.

Diamonds & Rust is a perfect, sunshine- drenched album of west- coast folk- tinged rock, full of star session players.
It could almost have been a signal to all the recent comers on her patch many of them friends and colleagues, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Maria Muldaur that Baez was here first and was sweetly reasserting her authority.
Just listen to her mastery on "Children & All That Jazz", her cover of Stevie Wonder's "Never Thought You'd Leave In Summer" and the poignant closing medley of "I Dream Of Jeannie/Danny Boy".