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Sign up todayPositively 4th Street
The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña
Narrator
Bernadette Dunne
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Length
12 hours 21 minutes
Language
English
This is the candid, mesmerizing, and often intimate account of how four young people—Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña—gave rise to a modern-day bohemia and created the enduring sound and style of the 1960s.
Even before they became lovers in 1963, Dylan and Joan Baez were seen as the reigning king and queen of folk music. But their songs and their public images grew out of their association with Joan’s younger sister, Mimi, a musician in her own right, and Richard Fariña, the roguish novelist Mimi married when she was seventeen. Their rise from scruffy coffeehouse folksingers to pop stars comes about through their complex interpersonal relationships, as the young Dylan courts the famous Joan to further his career, Fariña woos Mimi while looking longingly on her older sister, and Fariña’s friend Thomas Pynchon keeps an eye on their amours from afar.
David Hajdu is the author of Lush Life and Positively 4th Street. He lives in Manhattan and writes for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, New Republic, and New York Review of Books.
Bernadette Dunne is the winner of more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.
Reviews
“A hauntingly evocative blend of biography, musicology, and pop cultural history.”
“One of the best books about music in America.”
“The account of Bob and Joan’s musical-erotic passion is first rate music history and uproarious soap opera. Hajdu’s research is prodigious—even Fariña’s close chum Thomas Pynchon granted interviews—and his anecdotes are often off-the-cuff funny.”
“Hajdu provides a skillfully wrought, honest portrait that neither sentimentalizes nor slams the countercultural heyday.”
“With the explosive early 1960s folk revival as backdrop, Hajdu…entertainingly recounts this downright Shakespearean tale of Folk Queen Joan Baez falling for the Ass, Bob Dylan.”
“Narrated by Dunne, this documentation of four talented lives is related in a clear voice that changes intonation for each character. An enlightening and mesmerizing social history of the 1960s.”
“The real star of the Positively 4th Street audiobook is narrator Bernadette Dunne. Her voice is reminiscent of actress Jean Arthur, which filmmaker Frank Capra said sounded like ‘a thousand tinkling bells.’ Crystal clear and flawlessly intoned, she gives just a flavor of the famous parties’ distinctive dictions without attempting full-out impressions.”
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