Positively 4th Street

By: David Hajdu

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Positively 4th Street is a mesmerizing account of how four young people (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina) gave rise to a modern-day bohemia and created the enduring sound and style of the 1960s.

The story of the transformation of folk music from antiquarian pursuit to era-defining art form has never fully been told. Hajdu, whose biography of Billy Strayhorn set a new standard for books about popular music, tells it as the story of a colorful foursome who were drawn together in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and inspired a generation to gather around them.

Even before they became lovers in 1963, Bob 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, beautiful, haunted, a musician in her own right, and Richard Farina, the roguish, charming novelist Mimi married when she was 17. In Hajdu's candid, often intimate account (based on several hundred new interviews), their rise from scruffy coffeehouse folksingers to pop stars comes about through their complex personal relationships, as the young Dylan courts the famous Joan to further his career, Farina woos Mimi while looking longingly on her older sister, and Farina's friend Thomas Pynchon keeps an eye on their amours from afar.

Positively 4th Street is that rare book with a new story to tell about the 1960s: the story of how some of the greatest American popular music arose out of the lives of four gifted and charismatic figures.

©2001 David Hajdu (P)2002 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A hauntingly evocative blend of biography, musicology, and pop cultural history." (The New York Times)
"One of the finest pop music bios." (Booklist)

Frustrating

I couldn’t finish it. The reader if frustrating and the pace very slow. I had to speed up the reading speed to get it to sound normal.

Best music-culture book I've ever experienced.

Gripping, exhaustively researched and masterful. Simply a tour de force. I'd read The Ten-Cent Plague, and was dazzled, but this was something else altogether...

The story was well written. I enjoyed the detailed description of the time and places.

Dislike the reader's reading in voices approximating characters in the book. It took away from the story and descriptions.

Great stuff!

For fans of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez this is a must. I first heard Dylan at school in 1966 in South Africa when we put on George Bernard Shaw's Arms And The Man and a teacher used Masters Of War as the main theme.
From their I got on to Baez and it opened a whole new world of music for me.
In January 1973 I was lucky enough to see Mimi performing at a coffeehouse in San Francisco with Hoyt Axton and it turned into one of my all time favourite evenings as Joan turned up. She had just returned from a concert tour in Japan.
She a Mimi sang together, performing In The Quiet Morning, written by Mimi about Janis Joplin.
Listen to this book. It opens up a whole new dimension on some of the greatest folk artists of all time.

Page Turner…awesome

Well read, well written piece. You don’t know Dylan or Baez till you’ve read this, and real story is much more interesting than the mythology. I found narration outstanding, thank you!

Positively gripping

The book was surprisingly good and interesting.

The story of the rise of folk music in the 50's and 60's is like a big puzzle, as it came on the heels of McCarthyism, and a long poltical chill.

David Hadju's book, which tells the story of Richard Farina and Mimi Baez, provided a vital piece to that puzzle, and in so doing fashioned a dramatic frame with which to make this account compelling.

The rise of folk music, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and this milieu has a special place in contemporary social history, besides its entertainment value. The sudden popularity of folk music is an often overlooked story of that generation. Not only does it describe an aspect of a protest movement, but also the evolution of a niche of mass culture.

I chose this book reluctantly because the reader's voice had been denigrated by a previous review.. At first I thought perhaps there was merit to the criticism, but I became accustomed to the reader's voice, and felt her dramatic inflections and vocal characterizations added considerably to this book's many merits. I would have no hesitation to chose another book performed by this reader.

Anyone who has read Bob Dylan's Chronicles, would certainly find this this book a fascinating companion volume.

Folk music tangled up in blue

The characters are fascinating and the story reveals so much about interconnections and creative forces in music and literature that it's a wonder the author could have known so much, let alone presented it in such a compelling, coherent narrative. Just as important, Bernadette Dunne makes it all come alive. She was an ideal choice to read this book and she takes the listener through thick and thin. Hearing her was much better than reading it myself.

Wonderful History and Great Performance by Dunne

This is an excellent book that details the history of folk music as it relates to Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Richard Farina, and tangentially Bob Dylan. As someone who does not like Dylan, this book affirmed my impressions of Bob Dylan and introduced me to people who were more interesting and inspiring than any contemporary musicians in the news.

I am not someone who likes folk music so I was surprised that the quality of this book is so good that it maintained my interest. Hajdu does a brilliant job putting events in chronological order and detailing the evolution of these different musicians and why their music evolved. The misogyny of the period is plainly described and Hadju uses first person quotes whenever possible.

The way the folk scene had moments of synchronicity, politics, and apathy are really interesting. I enjoyed this book quite a bit and became a fan of the Farinas in the process.

Good book, unfortunate reading

Although I don't agree that Bernadette Dunne's reading of Positively 4th Street ruins the book in its entirety, her choices are genuinely unfortunate.

Her Dylan voice is absurd and that's being nice about it.

Dunne's reading of other quoted persons in the book are also in affected tones but halfhearted ones. None match the patronizing affect she places on the Dylan voice, with the possible exception of the insulting Italian-American dialect she attempts when quoting an Italian restaurant owner.

None of these voices are required by the book itself, which has all the written conventions of ", he said" and "she said" that a reader needs to distinguish the quotes.

All that said, if you're interested in this period of American music, David Hajdu's book is a seminal addition to the record.

A Generally Compelling Listen

I liked this audiobook for the most part. The narrator had her hands full - there were so many characters (literally, lol) she had to voice, some of them famous and therefore with some pressure to sound convincing. But I thought she did admirably. I did find, however, the actual writing to be a bit “catty”, not exactly true (Robbie Robertson would contradict the statement that Albert G came up with The Band as the name for his band) and draggy in places to the point that I almost stopped listening. But I’m glad I didn’t.