By the way, I have never seen Joan Baez playing a nylon string guitar. I'm sure she may have tried one out, but by the time she started recording, she was known for her steel string Martin (and her
From the May/June 2019 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
In 1966,
Joan Baez, then 25 and already an internationally renowned singer and activist, encountered an old Martin that really spoke to her. Joan Saxe, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, had just acquired a circa 1880 Style 0-40, and when Saxe met Baez that year, she handed Baez the guitar and asked if she could help troubleshoot some string rattling. Baez played the instrument and, apparently mesmerized by its dulcet tone, offered to trade Saxe not one but two guitars for the 0-40, promising to reverse the swap if it proved unsatisfactory.
For the next couple of years, Baez performed and recorded extensively with the 0-40—it’s heard on her 1967 album,
Joan, and seen on the Japanese pressing of
David’s Album. But in 1968, Saxe asked Baez to undo the trade, as the old Martin had been a gift from her grandmother.