Any Day Now
Joan Baez beat Bob Dylan to folk stardom, but she soon became one his biggest supporters, key interpreters, and briefly his lover.Any Day Nowfinds her playing all three roles; supporting, interpreting, and loving a disc full of his songs. Many of the more curious numbers ("The Walls of Redwing," "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere") were unavailable from Dylan at the time of the double-album's original 1968 release. Baez gets deeply into this stuff, adding her own weight and color to Dylan's idiosyncratic lines; even tackling the epic-length weirdness of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." The best track, "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word," remains the definitive version of the song.--Michael Ruby