Joan Baez - Diamonds & Rust (50th Anniversary Edition) (1LP)

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.

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 frst 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".

1. Diamonds & Rust
2. Fountain Of Sorrow
3. Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer
4. Children And All That Jazz
5. Simple Twist Of Fate
6. Blue Sky
7. Hello In There
8. Jesse
9. Winds Of The Old Days
10. Dida
11. I Dream Of Jeannie
12. Danny Boy (Medley)