Joan Baez At Woodstock: Her Song For Joe Hill (VIDEO)

Below is a clip of Joan Baez singing a song for Joe Hill at Woodstock, 40 years ago this coming August.

Hill was a labor activist and member of the Wobblies executed in 1915.

The clip is part of the 40th Anniversary Edition of the original Woodstock film, 'Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music' which includes unseen performances from 13 groups, including Baez, Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker and five performances (including Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Grateful Dead) who played at Woodstock but never appeared in a film version.

If you're short on Father's Day ideas, the DVD is out June 9.


WATCH BAEZ:

Comments

[Sweet-Marie]

01:18 PM on 06/01/2009

Love, love, love Joan Baez.

[ghenry]

07:26 AM on 06/01/2009

Joe Hill is a major major song. I have kept it in my heart since the days of Woodstock and sing it to my children often. Joan Baez is major.

The beauty of this song reminds me of The Ballad of Ira Hayes sung by Bob Dylan. Please go and listen to it. It is as major as Joe Hill.

[Seawriter]

11:37 PM on 05/31/2009

On that same segment, Joan sets down her guitar and sings Swing Low Sweet Chariot, a cappella.
Her voice massages your soul. Incredible rendition!

[LMPE]

09:22 PM on 05/31/2009

Keep it going, Joan! Nothing beats challenging the establishment!

Too bad that the documentary didn't show Janis Joplin.

[Cosmic-Zantor]

09:36 PM on 05/31/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sreHPwjHTVE

[Mulvaney]

09:49 PM on 05/31/2009

If you ever get a chance to see Pennebaker's film about Monterey Pop, her performance there was amazing. It included shots of Mama Cass and others looking at Janis with their mouths gaping. I don't know if it on DVD, but that would make a good father's day gift (hint, hint).

[levibatgirl]

09:04 PM on 05/31/2009

Joan Baez has an awesome voice.
I always loved her songs about world struggles. She opened my eyes at a very young age.

The Partisan is one of my favorites.

[Mulvaney]

09:10 PM on 05/31/2009

We heard Leonard Cohen sing the Partison a few months ago. That particular concert will always stand out, but Joan sings it well.

[LiberalBuzz]

07:46 PM on 05/31/2009

I used to just love going to Joan's concerts back in the day. Beautiful voice.

I'd LOVE to see ALL of the music from Woodstock released some day. To me Jimi and Ten Years After were THE highlights. But it was all good. Something I miss about those days was the acceptance of ALL kinds of music both on the radio and at festivals. Folk, to 50's (Sha Na Na was there) Santana, to Alvin Lee the Who, and of course Jimi.

There are so many other performances that didn't make it to the movie for various reasons. I remember at the time hearing about a huge festival to be held in upstate New York and trying to hitchhike out there but didn't make it in time.

Did go to a few others though. Altamont being the most disasterous though. I can be seen in the movie Gimme Shelter. I am just about dead center in front of the stage. There is a part when Marty Balin of the Airplane leaps over several members of the crowd to rescue a black kid about to get beaten up by the Hell's Angels and he about knocked me to the ground when he jumped over me.

[uneeda]

06:05 PM on 05/31/2009

a classy lady

[Citizen54]

05:44 PM on 05/31/2009

Not to take away from her rendition, but Joan Baez did not write this song, contrary to the headline saying it's hers. It started out as a poem by a man named Arthur Hayes, and was then put to song back in the 30s.

[Robert Cantor]

08:45 PM on 05/31/2009

when an artist renders a song that rendition becomes theirs.

[oakley9]

04:15 PM on 05/31/2009

NOT the best part of Woodstock at all. Although I can appreciate her, she seemed out of place at Woodstock. It wasn't a folk festival and she is a folk artist.

[Mulvaney]

04:45 PM on 05/31/2009

Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Ravi Shankar and others performed at Woodstock, so it had a few different strains running through it. There is nothing like singing an old labor song about a Wobbly to a huge group of hippies. I heard that song first through Joan, although not at Woodstock -- loved it then and still do now.

[alguien]

01:50 PM on 06/01/2009

unfortunately, in the richie havens segment, the camera spends most of the time firmly aimed at havens' nostrils.

[truthartbeauty]

04:49 PM on 05/31/2009

but she is a peace activist. woodstock was not all just getting naked and high and rockin out.

[NoSillyName]

02:09 PM on 05/31/2009

"Father's Day"? LOL. My father is going to be 92; he hated '60s music then and he'd hate it now.

[wandering girl]

06:29 PM on 05/31/2009

my father, may he rest in peace, felt the same way, that "modern" music was nothing but garbage. to prove his point, he noted that a lyrical song playing on the radio (this was in 1966) was worth more than any "Beatles crap" that I loved so much.

unfortunately for him, the song was "Michelle."

[NoSillyName]

02:17 PM on 06/01/2009

Sorry about your Dad; glad mine is still around.

LOL, "Michelle" of all the songs he could have dissed!

[wm1066]

01:51 PM on 05/31/2009

There is a DVD out of either the Newport Jazz fest or the Montery jazz fest with a great interview with her in a car, of all places. And she was great, I think Bob Dylan was in the car too. Sorry I can't remember the right jazz fest. The DVD had some great music on it,
It might have been called "Festival"

[JohnDewey]

02:57 PM on 05/31/2009

Yes, the film you mean is Murray Lerner's, "Festival!" It has performances from several artists - Pete Seeger, Peter Paul & Mary, Johnny Cash, Buffy Saint-Marie, The Sacred Harp Singers, Muddy Waters & Donovan, among others... It's a fantastic film.

I'd also recommend Lerner's "Jazz On A Summer's Day," which gives a similar treatment to the Newport Jazz Festival.

[sdskelton03]

11:41 AM on 05/31/2009

Dirty hippies.

[Robert Cantor]

08:46 PM on 05/31/2009

lol!

[Pippilangstrumpf]

11:40 AM on 05/31/2009

Oh....that voice.....I would cut of my right arm to have a voice like that.
I wore her albums out in high school.

[sdskelton03]

11:54 AM on 05/31/2009

You probably do.

Her voice isn't that great. I would say it is adequate at best. Her voice can be best described as feeble, whiney and arrogant.

Her voice is only good enough for a protest singer.

[Epiphany2b]

01:39 PM on 05/31/2009

Ah, how we do claim to be the final authority on such things.

Beauty of voice is like the skin-deep variety . . . in the ear (eye) of the beholder. To me Joan Baez, John Denver, Aaron Neville and that ilk have the most beautiful voices. Johnny Cash, Elvin Presley, on the other hand were ones I would never listen to. Does that make me right? Of course not. Your opinion, even if you are a talent scout or record producer, doesn't make you right either.

Sing on Joan!

[Diogenis]

03:15 PM on 05/31/2009

you r full of poop.

[klandish]

12:04 PM on 05/31/2009

In 1971 I played Buffy Saint Marrie for my High School Civics Class when studying Manifest Destiny in a quaint little section of Orange County California. They were beside themselves.

[JenniferEccles]

03:08 PM on 06/17/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT6qoD1uWsM

[gemzenith]

11:11 AM on 05/31/2009

Before I watched the vid I wiki'd Joe Hill.Fascinating.Why don't I remember learning this in school?Or is this the stuff were not supposed to know?

[klandish]

12:09 PM on 05/31/2009

Not suppose to know.

[Stonybrooke2]

10:49 AM on 05/31/2009

Great song.