Gulf Winds is the seventeenth studio album (and nineteenth overall) by Joan Baez, released in 1976. It was her final album of new material for A&M. Baez stated in her autobiography, And a Voice to Sing With, that most of the songs were written while on tour with the Rolling Thunder Revue with Bob Dylan.[3] "O Brother!" was a clever reply to Dylan's song "Oh Sister". On the title song, a ten-minute long autobiographical recollection of her childhood, Baez accompanies herself only with her own acoustic guitar (the rest of the album features standard mid-1970s pop/rock backup), creating a sound reminiscent of her earliest pure folk recordings.
Gulf Winds is the only Baez album without any covers; each song was written by Baez herself.
"Sometimes, I wake up at night and write a song. Sometimes a tune comes to my head when I'm walking in the hills, and I have to make up words for it. Sometimes I sit in a bar in San Francisco and scribble into a notepad what I call my 'streams of unconsciousness.' When I have enough scribbles in the pad, and enough tunes in my head, I go into the studio and make an album. That's how I made this one."
- Joan Baez
Track listing
All tracks composed by Joan Baez
Side One
"Sweeter for Me" 4:25
"Seabirds" 4:32
"Caruso" 3:42
"Still Waters at Night" 3:01
"Kingdom of Childhood" 7:51
Side Two
"O Brother!" 3:19
"Time Is Passing Us By" 3:43
"Stephanie's Room" 4:05
"Gulf Winds" 10:29
Personnel
Joan Baez – vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, synthesizer
