"Sweet Sir Galahad" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Joan Baez | ||||
from the album One Day at a Time | ||||
B-side | "Long Black Veil" | |||
Released | October 1969 | |||
Recorded | September 1969 | |||
Studio | Bradley's Barn, Mount Juliet, Tennessee | |||
Genre | Folk | |||
Length | 3:26 | |||
Label | Vanguard (UK) Vanguard (US) | |||
Songwriter(s) | Joan Baez | |||
Producer(s) | Maynard Solomon Joan Baez | |||
Joan Baez singles chronology | ||||
|
"Sweet Sir Galahad" is a song written by Joan Baez that she famously performed at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, [1] after having debuted it during an appearance in a Season Three episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour , which aired on March 30, 1969. A recording of the song, first released as a single in late 1969, would lead off Baez's 1970 album One Day at a Time .
The song tells the story of Baez's younger sister Mimi Fariña and her marriage (her second) to music producer Milan Melvin. (Mimi's first husband Richard Fariña had died in a motorcycle accident two years previously.) Mimi and Milan were married at the 1968 Big Sur Folk Festival. Baez was inspired to write the song after hearing of Melvin's courtship of Fariña, during which he came into her bedroom at night through a window. [2]
The song became one of Baez's best-known compositions. In her 1987 memoir And a Voice to Sing With, Baez described "Sweet Sir Galahad" as the first song she ever wrote (although she is credited as a co-writer on two tracks on her 1967 album Joan ). [3]
Mimi Fariña and Milan Melvin divorced in 1971 and Mimi died in 2001. In 2006, Baez contributed a "re-tooled" version of the song to Volume 1 of the XM Artist Confidential CD series. In the new version, Baez changed the lyric "Here's to the dawn of their days" to "Here's to the dawn of her days."
A live version of the song appears as a bonus track on the 2006 reissue of Baez's 1995 album Ring Them Bells .
Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums.
Where Are You Now, My Son? is the fourteenth studio album by Joan Baez, released in 1973. One side of the album featured recordings Baez made during a US bombing raid on Hanoi over Christmas 1972. Included on the recording are the voices of Barry Romo, Michael Allen and human rights attorney Telford Taylor, with whom Baez made her famous 1972 visit to North Vietnam.
Ring Them Bells is a live album taken from Joan Baez' April 1995 shows at New York's The Bottom Line. In addition to her own solo set, the album featured collaborations with other female artists including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Mimi Fariña, Dar Williams, the Indigo Girls and Mary Black. Though Baez and many of the collaborating artists were admirers of one another, this album marked the first time many of them had worked together. Baez' manager, Mark Spector, served as producer.
One Day at a Time is the 11th studio album by Joan Baez, released in January 1970. Recorded in Nashville, the album was a continuation of Baez' experimentation with country music, begun with the previous year's David's Album. It is significant in that it was the first to include Baez' own compositions, "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song for David", the former song a ballad for her younger sister Mimi Fariña, and the latter song being for her then-husband, David Harris, at the time in prison as a conscientious objector. One Day at a Time also included work by The Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, and Pete Seeger.
Joan is the seventh studio album by Joan Baez, released in 1967. Having exhausted the standard voice/guitar folksong format by 1967, Baez collaborated with arranger-conductor Peter Schickele, on an album of orchestrated covers of mostly then-current pop and rock and roll songs. Works by Donovan, Paul Simon, Tim Hardin, the Beatles, and Richard Fariña were included, as well as selections by Jacques Brel and Edgar Allan Poe.
Margarita Mimi Baez Fariña was an American singer-songwriter and activist, the youngest of three daughters to a white mother and Mexican-American physicist Albert Baez. She was the younger sister of the singer and activist Joan Baez.
Rare, Live & Classic is a 1993 box set compilation by Joan Baez. Released on Vanguard, where Baez had recorded her most influential work during the first twelve years of her career, the set also included material from her subsequent record labels, A&M, Columbia and Gold Castle Records, as well as a number of previously unreleased studio and live recordings. Bob Dylan, Bob Gibson, Mimi Fariña, Judy Collins, Odetta and Kris Kristofferson are among those who make guest appearances on the various tracks; also included were two tracks from a never-released album recorded in 1981 with the Grateful Dead.
Joan Baez: Classics is a 1986 compilation, focusing on her A&M period (1972–76). Released in the mid-1980s, the album was significant for being the first Joan Baez compilation to appear on CD, and remains one of the more comprehensive collections of her 1970's work. The CD was part of A&M's series of compilations from artists associated with their label to commemorate their 25th anniversary.
The Joan Baez Lovesong Album is a 1976 compilation of Joan Baez songs. Vanguard Records put it together as part of its Baez reissue series, after Baez left the label for A&M Records. The album is a collection of love songs, including traditional and contemporary work, as well as an arrangement of E. E. Cummings' "All in Green My Love Went Riding" by Peter Schickele. The cover painting is by the painter and musician Eric Von Schmidt.
Richard George Fariña was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist.
Linda Solomon is an American music critic and editor. Although she has written about various aspects of popular culture, her main focus has been on folk music, blues, R&B, jazz and country music. Living at 95 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village during the early 1960s, she became a columnist for The Village Voice, capturing Village night life in club reviews for the weekly "Riffs" column.
Albert Vinicio Báez was a Mexican-American physicist and the father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña, and an uncle of John C. Baez. He made important contributions to the early development of X-ray microscopes, X-ray optics, and later X-ray telescopes.
The First Ten Years is the second compilation album by Joan Baez, released in October 1970. It rounds up highlights of her first decade with the Vanguard label.
Woodstock Two is the second live album released of the 1969 Woodstock Festival concert. The two-LP set contains more material from many acts featured on the first Woodstock album with additional performances from Mountain and Melanie. The tracks by Mountain were in fact not from their Woodstock performance but rather a show recorded at New York's Fillmore East. Unlike the first Woodstock soundtrack LP, this LP does not contain any ancillary stage announcements. Like the previous album this was also packaged in a triple gatefold sleeve.
"Diamonds & Rust" is a song written, composed, and performed by Joan Baez. It was written in November 1974 and released in 1975.
Celebration at Big Sur is a film of the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival in Big Sur, California, featuring Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and others.
Kathleen Larisch and Carol McComb are American singers and instrumentalists, who performed together in the 1960s as Kathy and Carol. As a duo, they released an acclaimed 1965 folk song album on Elektra Records, before pursuing separate careers. They have reunited to perform together on several occasions in recent years.
Woodstock 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm is a six-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 40th Anniversary of the festival.
Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music is a 4-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 25th anniversary of the festival. The box set contains tracks from Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, Woodstock 2, and numerous additional, previously unreleased performances from the festival as well as the stage announcements and crowd noises. Just prior to the box set's release, Atlantic Records released a much shorter 1-CD version entitled The Best of Woodstock. In 2019, Rhino Records issued a 38-CD box set called Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive which includes every musical performance as well as stage announcements and other ancillary material.
The Big Sur Folk Festival, held from 1964 to 1971 in California, was an informal gathering of prominent and emerging folk artists from across the United States. Nancy Jane Carlen (1941-2013) was working at the Esalen Institute when Joan Baez was asked to lead workshops on music. Carlen was a good friend of Baez, and they decided to invite other artists, which turned into the first festival.