Joan Baez – Any Day Now (180g 2LP)

Label: Pure Pleasure / Vanguard – VSD79306/7

180 Gram Virgin Vinyl

AAA 100% Analogue – Mastered by Shaun Magee at Abbey Road

Limited Edition – Pure Analogue Audiophile Mastering – Pressed at Pallas Germany

This aibum Featured in Michael Fremer’s Heavy Rotation in the September 2009 Issue of Stereophile

Where Dylan’s own singing is wonderfully raw and rough, Baez is clear and pure. Both are great for me, but very, very different from each other. These lovely renditions are like no one else’s. Just pure Joan in her finest voice.

Recorded in October of 1968, Any Day Now marks Joan Baez’s first foray into the recording studios of Nashville, armed with an entire program of Bob Dylan’s material and backed by a stellar cast of Music City’s finest session players. Dylan himself, coming out of an imposed exile after a motorcycle crash, had issued only one recording since 1966’s Blonde on Blonde; his low-key “comeback” outing, John Wesley Harding, released in December of 1967, had also been recorded in Nash Vegas with some of the same A-list players. Baez’s interpretations on this double album are simply stellar. Her empathy for the material, her keen understanding of Dylan’s sound world, and her own glorious voice brought another dimension to these 16 songs and, if anything, extended their meanings.
“Based upon the diversity of music, quality of product and their extraordinary rate of progress, Pure Pleasure Records is our re-issue record company of the year.”
– hi-fi+
Any Day Now is Joan Baez’ all-Dylan album, including a cover of the Richard Manuel/Bob Dylan song “Tears of Rage,” first released on The Band’s Music From Big Pink.

Producer: Maynard Solomon

Associate producer: Jack Lothrop

Recording engineer: Selby Cofeen

Recorded 1960

Re-mastering by: Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios