A neighbor dropped by last night to invite me to see the Woodstock movie. She has been on an old-hippie-high since Woodstock 40 years ago and re-blossomed at the 50th Anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival last month.
In her past life I am convinced she was a Joan Baez groupie who has been humming since she received a new Joan Baez CD for her birthday .
The song she sings most often: “God is God,” because she loves the line: “Every day on earth is another chance to get it right.”
And that line seems to fit perfectly the story told by Joan regarding her 90ish year old father and his remarriage to her mother.
According to Genevieve, who was at the Festival, it seems that Joan’s father, who was either separated or divorced from her mother for many years decided, “I’m 91 and probably won’t be around much longer and I don’t want to die an unmarried man.”
He asked his former wife to marry him again and she apparently said, “What the hell.”
Joan asked her dad — a typical professor dresser — “What are you going to wear.”
“Something casual.”
“On no” said Joan, “you are going to wear a tuxedo or I am not going to sing at your wedding.”
Her father agreed. Joan sang.
Here is “Forever Young” which she sang at the wedding — this time her parents got it right. Her father died in 2007 at 94, a married man.
This is the song that she sang at their wedding and at the Newport Folk Festival.
Her father, Albert, was a physicist (co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and author of one of the most widely used textbook on physics. According to Wikipedia he refused to work on the Manhattan Project the code name for the atomic bomb project, a decision said to profoundly effect Joan Baez.
Joan Baez will be appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 18. Young, Baez, zombies at TIFF 2009
PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS AT THE EXAMINER: Getting marriage right: Joan Baez sings at parents wedding (video)
Copyright 2009 Rita Watson