The song Joan Baez knew she had to cover: “As dark as it is beautiful”
Throughout her career, Joan Baez has always had a knack for writing songs that feel timely or that have a certain sense of poignance about them. Often politically charged in her work and focused on equal rights and activism, songs such as ‘Saigon Bride’ were vehemently in opposition to the Vietnam War, while ‘Song of Bangladesh’ highlights the struggles with famine experienced after the nation’s declaration of independence from Pakistan.
At the same time, she also knew how to pick out someone else’s brilliant work and when it was worthwhile providing her own interpretation of it in the form of a cover version. Her version of the Phil Ochs song ‘There But For Fortune’ has long been a staple of her repertoire and is another indictment of the Vietnam War, while her version of the civil rights gospel anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’ is another of her most celebrated covers.
In 2018, her attention would be drawn to a particular song that arose from a particularly dark moment in modern American history. At the tail end of President Barack Obama’s second term in office, a tragic mass shooting event took place in the South Carolina city of Charleston in what was a racially motivated attack on an African Methodist Church, killing nine people. The then-president would pay tribute to the lives of the victims with a eulogy at the church where the shootings took place and sang a tearful rendition of the famous hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’.
It was not this song that caught the attention of Baez, but instead another track called ‘The President Sang Amazing Grace’ that was written in response to Obama’s touching gesture. Baez was driving along in her car and felt incredibly moved by its lyrics, but didn’t know who the original performer of the track was when she first heard it.
Speaking to The Atlantic, Baez recalled how she “had to pull over to make sure I heard whose song it was because I knew I had to sing it.” After finding out that it had been written and recorded by folk singer Zoe Mulford in 2016, she decided that she would follow up on her promise and deliver her own rendition of the track, which was eventually released on her 2018 album Whistle Down the Wind.
Baez went on to describe how she felt when she first heard Mulford’s version, claiming it was “so expressive of my thoughts and feelings, which are pretty fucking gloomy,” before adding that Mulford “did it in such a beautiful way that’s as dark as it is beautiful.” Because of the poignance of the original song, Baez chose not to alter too much in her own rendition, staying faithful to the sparse piano arrangement while adding some sombre bowed double bass and acoustic guitars.
As far as Baez’s selections of songs to cover go, this is arguably one of her finest tracks. It highlights how, even in her later life, she remains driven by her desire to create change and a better society for Americans. The shockwaves felt from the attack in 2015 are still sensed ten years on, and the lyrics written by Mulford will sadly remain just as powerful for as long as America fails to address its ills.
