BIRMINGHAM SUNDAY (Joan Baez)
“Birmingham Sunday” is a song written by Richard Fariña and performed by both Fariña and his sister-in-law Joan Baez. The subject matter is the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 by members of the Ku Klux Klan that killed four girls and injured 22 others. The melody of the song comes from a traditional English ballad named “I Loved a Lass”. Baez’s version was released on her 1964 album Joan Baez/5, and was used as the theme song of the 1997 Spike Lee documentary about the bombing, 4 Little Girls. (More from Wikipedia)
After their marriage, Mimi and Richard Fariña began performing as a folk-rock duo that were much closer to the folk end of things than, say, the Byrds. Their first album was Celebrations for a Grey Day (1965). Their best known songs are “Pack up Your Sorrows”, “Reno, Nevada”, and “Birmingham Sunday”. “Reno, Nevada” was one of the early songs performed by Fairport Convention (dating back to the time when Judy Dyble was the band’s lead singer). As recorded by Joan Baez, “Birmingham Sunday” became the theme song for the Spike Lee documentary film 4 Little Girls (1997) about the infamous 1963 church bombing that killed four young children.
(March 2015)
