With the Vietnam War winding down,
Joan Baez, who had devoted one side of her last album to her trip to Hanoi, delivered the kind of commercial album A&M Records must have wanted when it signed her three years earlier. But she did it on her own terms, putting together a session band of contemporary jazz veterans like
Larry Carlton,
Wilton Felder, and
Joe Sample, and mixing a wise selection from the work of current singer-songwriters like
Jackson Browne and
John Prine with pop covers of
Stevie Wonder and
the Allman Brothers Band, and an unusually high complement of her own writing. A&M, no doubt recalling the success of her cover of
the Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," released her version of
the Allmans' "Blue Sky" as a single, and it got halfway up the charts. But the real hit was the title track, a self-penned masterpiece on the singer's favorite subject, her relationship with
Bob Dylan. Outdoing the current crop of confessional singer/songwriters at soul baring,
Baez sang to
Dylan, reminiscing about her '60s love affair with him intensely, affectionately, and unsentimentally. It was her finest moment as a songwriter and one of her finest performances, period, and when A&M finally released it on 45, it made the Top 40, propelling the album to gold status. But those who bought the disc for "Diamonds & Rust" also got to hear "Winds of the Old Days," in which
Baez forgave
Dylan for abandoning the protest movement, as well as the jazzy "Children and All That Jazz," a delightful song about motherhood, and the wordless vocals of "Dida," a duet with
Joni Mitchell accompanied by
Mitchell's backup band,
Tom Scott and the L.A. Express. The cover songs were typically accomplished, making this the strongest album of
Baez's post-folk career. ~ William Ruhlmann