Diamonds & Rust＜限定生産盤＞

ジョーン・バエズの最もパーソナルで洗練された75年作『Diamonds & Rust』は、彼女のキャリアにおける転換点となった1枚。彼女の力強いフォークのルーツが、当時の豪華で洗練されたプロダクションと見事に融合し、彼女の声はこれまでで最も豊かに響いています。ディランとの関係を歌ったタイトルトラック、ジャクソン・ブラウン「Fountain of Sorrow」やスティーヴィー・ワンダー「Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer」のカヴァー、心躍るダンサブル・フォーキー・チューン「Dida」など、フォーク・バラードからコンテンポラリー・カヴァーまで彼女の才能の全貌を情感豊かな強度で表現した作品です。ヴァイナル愛好家にとってこのアルバムの決定版といえるこの仕様のLPは、レコードコレクションの必須アイテムとなるでしょう!

With the Vietnam War winding down, Joan Baez, who had devoted one side of her last album to her trip to Hanoi, delivered the kind of commercial album A&M Records must have wanted when it signed her three years earlier. But she did it on her own terms, putting together a session band of contemporary jazz veterans like Larry Carlton, Wilton Felder, and Joe Sample, and mixing a wise selection from the work of current singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne and John Prine with pop covers of Stevie Wonder and the Allman Brothers Band, and an unusually high complement of her own writing. A&M, no doubt recalling the success of her cover of the Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," released her version of the Allmans' "Blue Sky" as a single, and it got halfway up the charts. But the real hit was the title track, a self-penned masterpiece on the singer's favorite subject, her relationship with Bob Dylan. Outdoing the current crop of confessional singer/songwriters at soul baring, Baez sang to Dylan, reminiscing about her '60s love affair with him intensely, affectionately, and unsentimentally. It was her finest moment as a songwriter and one of her finest performances, period, and when A&M finally released it on 45, it made the Top 40, propelling the album to gold status. But those who bought the disc for "Diamonds & Rust" also got to hear "Winds of the Old Days," in which Baez forgave Dylan for abandoning the protest movement, as well as the jazzy "Children and All That Jazz," a delightful song about motherhood, and the wordless vocals of "Dida," a duet with Joni Mitchell accompanied by Mitchell's backup band, Tom Scott and the L.A. Express. The cover songs were typically accomplished, making this the strongest album of Baez's post-folk career. ~ William Ruhlmann