Mimi & Richard Farina - The Complete Vanguard Recordings (Remastered) (1965-68/2001)

Richard Farina was better known as a novelist (he wrote Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me), while his wife Mimi was best known as the younger sister of Joan Baez. On the two albums they cut together (plus the outtakes released after Richard's death in a 1966 motorcycle accident), their musical progression captured the tenor of the times--a progression from folk traditionalism to topical social comment to playful surrealism. This three-disc set presents the entirety of the duo's studio output, plus a nine-song performance from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (issued here in its entirety for the first time). Richard's mountain dulcimer spurred a revival of interest in the instrument, and his "Pack Up Your Sorrows" established itself as a folk standard of the era, but guitarist Mimi (who died of cancer in 2001) was plainly a better singer and more proficient musician than the husband to whom she deferred. --Don McLeese