Joan Baez-Eric von Schmidt

Last Friday night Joan Baez and Eric von Schmidt sang folk songs in Agassiz Theater, under the aegis of the Harvard Liberal Union. Young Liberals hoping to hear even one "song of social protest" were disappointed, for the program was arranged under the widely-held and peculiar assumption that everything sung by a folk singer (even essentially conservative songs like many of the ones Miss Baez sings) partake in some way of the yeasty liberal mythos.

In any event, Miss Baez sang with the casual magnificence that is well known to Cambridge audiences. She sings without ever forcing a note, jes' letting that cool voice float out of her sligtly open mouth. Although the humorous songs in the Baez canon are superb; the quieter ones are even better, and Mary Hamilton, which Miss Baez sings softly with very little modulation in volume, was clearly the high point of the evening.

Eric von Schmidt is somewhat furrier than Miss Baez, and he sings differently, too. He sings old Leadbelly songs, Negro blues stuff, with a slow heavy beat, and effectively repititious chord patterns. His songs are humorous and his guitar technique dazzling (a technique which includes the use of a Hayes-Bickford knife to produce at points an odd sort of tone) and his general savoir-faire entirely compensates for the fact that, like many male folk singers, his voice sounds much like Jack Benny's Rochester.

Some of the most delightful moments of the evening came in songs which Miss Baez and Mr. von Schmidt sang together. Mr. von Schmidt revealed himself an adept at the harmonica, and both singers played on a cylinder of paper which makes a sound doubtless rarely before heard in the civilized world. At one point Miss Baez discarded one of these instruments by tossing it into the audience--it was a movement of incredible grace, a grace that is evident in her whole bearing, even when she is standing still.

All in all, the Baez-von Schmidt concert was a particularly enjoyable affair, combining two excellent folk singers, whose songs and whose styles could not possibly be any more diverse.