Gulf Winds

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. "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.

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

• Joan Baez – vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, synthesizer
• Donald "Duck" Dunn – bass guitar
• Jim Gordon – drums
• Ray Kelley – cello
• Jesse Ehrlich – cello
• Larry Knechtel – acoustic and electric piano, organ
• Dean Parks – acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, string arrangements, conductor
• Sid Sharp – violin
• Malcolm Cecil – synthesizer effects, synthesizer programming

Technical

• Tommy Vicari – mix engineer
• Bernard Gelb – executive producer
• Roland Young – art direction
• Chuck Beeson – design
• Johanna Van Zantwyk – photography

"Special thanks to Carlos Bernal"

Chart positions

References