My dad never hesitated to share titles of the songs he loved. In his last years, he took a liking to Youtube. One of his favorite singers was Joan Baez.
Dad wrote in one of his emails, “By the way, the best song sung by her, I think, is Diamonds and Rust, particularly the guitar played by her in the prelude. Also important: To fully enjoy a song, you must know not only its lyrics but also the background of its composition.”
When I learned of my dad’s unexpected passing last July, “Diamonds and Rust” burst on the scene. Her folk guitar introduction accompanied me from Antrim, New Hampshire on the long drive back to Newton, Massachusetts. From there, the song continued to play on my twenty-hour flight from Boston to Chicago to Hong Kong and finally Taipei. But it didn’t stop there. Her words stung on the 2 am taxi ride to Taichung, Taiwan.
Why did my father like the songs of Joan Baez so much? I knew he owned a song book of hers. I requested for it, on the premise that I wanted to select something to sing for his funeral. Handwritten on the title page were the Chinese words from his old friend and classmate Lao Ong, who was instrumental in getting him the lectureship in English composition at Taiwan’s top university back in the sixties. Unfortunately “Diamonds and Rust” was not among the sixty-six titles.
Was there a reason “Diamonds and Rust” stuck to me whenever I thought of my father?
I decided to look into the lyrics and the music. It’s a love song Baez wrote for Bob Dylan in 1974 and released a year later.
The guitar picking of the accompaniment and ascending bass is what makes it so sticky. How does it translate on the piano?
The piano version looks less simple. Four flats is not a common occurrence for folk songs. The score is written as a direct translation of how it sounds on the guitar. It’s not pianistic, nor should it be. It was written for voice and guitar.
In 1975, Joan Baez sang in F minor but played it in E minor. She did this by either fixing a capo on the first fret or simply tuning the strings down half a step.
Forty years later, Joan Baez sang the song in Eb minor, a whole step down and at a slower tempo. It’s not unusual for our voice range to drop with age.
In between Eb and F minor is the easy key of E minor for pianists and guitarists. Voila! I will arrange a version easy to read and play for pianists — with one sharp —- in the easy key of E minor.
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