Gulf Winds

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. "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.

From the album's liner notes:


 * "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
 * 1) "Sweeter for Me" 4:25
 * 2) "Seabirds" 4:32
 * 3) "Caruso" 3:42
 * 4) "Still Waters at Night" 3:01
 * 5) "Kingdom of Childhood" 7:51

Side Two
 * 1) "O Brother!" 3:19
 * 2) "Time Is Passing Us By" 3:43
 * 3) "Stephanie's Room" 4:05
 * 4) "Gulf Winds" 10:29

Personnel
"Special thanks to Carlos Bernal"
 * Joan Baez – vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, synthesizer
 * Duck Dunn – bass
 * Jim Gordon – drums
 * Ray Kelley – cello
 * Jesse Ehrlich – cello
 * Larry Knechtel – acoustic and electric piano, organ
 * Dean Parks – acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, string arrangements, conductor
 * Sid Sharp – violin
 * Malcolm Cecil – synthesizer effects, synthesizer programming
 * Technical
 * Tommy Vicari - mix engineer
 * Bernard Gelb - executive producer
 * Roland Young - art direction
 * Chuck Beeson - design
 * Johanna Van Zantwyk - photography