Gulf Winds

Last updated
Gulf Winds
JBaez GulfWinds.jpg
Studio album by
ReleasedNovember 1976
Recorded1976
StudioSound Labs, Los Angeles; synthesizers at TONTO, Santa Monica [1]
Genre Folk
Length44:05
Label A&M
Producer David Kershenbaum
Joan Baez chronology
From Every Stage
(1976)
Gulf Winds
(1976)
Blowin' Away
(1977)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [2]

Gulf Winds is the seventeenth studio album (and nineteenth overall) by Joan Baez, released in 1976. It was her final album of new material for A&M. Baez stated in her autobiography, And a Voice to Sing With, that most of the songs were written while on tour with the Rolling Thunder Revue with Bob Dylan. [3] "O Brother!" was a clever reply to Dylan's song "Oh Sister". On the title song, a ten-minute long autobiographical recollection of her childhood, Baez accompanies herself only with her own acoustic guitar (the rest of the album features standard mid-1970s pop/rock backup), creating a sound reminiscent of her earliest pure folk recordings.

Contents

Gulf Winds is the only Baez album without any covers; each song was written by Baez herself.

From the album's liner notes:

"Sometimes, I wake up at night and write a song. Sometimes a tune comes to my head when I'm walking in the hills, and I have to make up words for it. Sometimes I sit in a bar in San Francisco and scribble into a notepad what I call my 'streams of unconsciousness.' When I have enough scribbles in the pad, and enough tunes in my head, I go into the studio and make an album. That's how I made this one."
- Joan Baez

Track listing

All tracks composed by Joan Baez

Side One

  1. "Sweeter for Me" 4:25
  2. "Seabirds" 4:32
  3. "Caruso" 3:42
  4. "Still Waters at Night" 3:01
  5. "Kingdom of Childhood" 7:51

Side Two

  1. "O Brother!" 3:19
  2. "Time Is Passing Us By" 3:43
  3. "Stephanie's Room" 4:05
  4. "Gulf Winds" 10:29

Personnel

Technical

"Special thanks to Carlos Bernal"

Chart positions

YearChartPosition
1976The Billboard 20062

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References

  1. "Joan Baez - Gulf Winds". Discogs. 1976.
  2. Allmusic review
  3. Baez, Joan. 1987. And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir. Century Hutchinson, London. ISBN   0-7126-1827-9