02/10/2020
Sixty years ago today, October 1, 1960, when she was just 19 years old, Joan’s debut solo album was released by Vanguard.
She wrote in her memoir, And A Voice To Sing With (1987): “…the summer of 1960 arrived….I went to New York to make my first Vanguard album. We worked in the Manhattan Towers Hotel on a dingy block of Broadway. The ballroom was available every day of the week except Wednesday, when it was transformed into a bingo parlor for the local residents and their guests. I stood on the dirtiest rug in New York City in my bare feet, dwarfed by the huge, musty room, and sang into three microphones, two on the outside for stereo, and one in the center for monaural. Freddy Hellerman of the Weavers used a fourth microphone for six songs after I had decided, under great pressure, that a second instrument, tastefully played, was not 'commercial,' but rather enhanced the music. The beautiful ballad “Mary Hamilton” was secured in one take, without a run-through. I would work for a few hours, and then Maynard and the engineer and I would go down the street for roast beef sandwiches. In three days we recorded nineteen songs, thirteen of which made up my first legitimate solo album.”
In 2015, the album was selected for induction into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress for special recognition and preservation as one of the sound recordings in over 130 years of recording history that has “cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy.”