Mimi & Richard Fariña

Mimi Baez Fariña (born Margarita Mimi Baez , April 30, 1945 – July 18, 2001) was a singer-songwriter and activist , the youngest of three daughters to a Scottish mother and a Mexican-American physicist , Albert Baez . She was the younger sister of the singer and activist Joan Baez . Early years [ edit ] Fariña's father, a physicist affiliated with Stanford University and MIT , moved his family frequently, due to his job assignments, working in places not just in the United States, but internationally. She benefited from dance and music lessons, and took up the guitar , joining the 1960s American folk music revival . Fariña met novelist , musician , and composer Richard Fariña in 1963 when she was 17 years old and married him at 18. The two collaborated on a number of influential folk albums, most notably, Celebrations for a Grey Day (1965) and Reflections in a Crystal Wind (1966), both on Vanguard Records . After Richard Fariña's 1966 death (on Mimi's twenty-first birthday) in a motorcycle accident, Mimi married Milan Melvin and continued to perform, sometimes recording and touring with either her sister Joan or the folksinger Tom Jans , with whom she recorded an album in 1971, entitled Take Heart . Among the songs she has written is "In the Quiet Morning (For Janis Joplin)", which her sister recorded. The song is included on Joan Baez's Greatest Hits album. In 1967, Fariña joined a satiric comedy troupe called The Committee. That same year, she and her sister Joan Baez were arrested at a peaceful demonstration, where the two were temporarily housed in Santa Rita Jail , personalizing the experience of captivity for her. By 1973, she was asked to accompany her sister Joan and BB King when they performed for the prisoners in Sing Sing Prison . Those two experiences led her to a desire to do more for those who are held in institutions. Bread and Roses [ edit ] In 1974, Fariña founded Bread and Roses , a nonprofit co-operative organization, designed to bring free music and entertainment to institutions: jails, hospitals, juvenile facilities, nursing homes, and prisons . Initially it was active in the San Francisco Bay area, but later, nationally. It still remains in operation, producing 500 shows per year. The organization's name came from a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim , " Bread and Roses ", which is commonly associated with a 1912 garment workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts . Though she continued to sing in her later years, releasing an album in 1985 and performing sporadically, Fariña devoted most of her time to running Bread and Roses. In the late 1980s, she teamed up with Pete Sears to play a variety of benefit and protest concerts. Many concerts were concerned with human rights issues in Central America, especially the US-backed civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador . They once set up to play on the abandoned railroad tracks outside Concord Naval Base in California. Surrounded by military police, Farina and Sears played a show for people protesting US weapons being shipped to government troops in El Salvador . In 1986, she took the time to record her own album, Mimi Fariña Solo . Fariña used her connections with the folksinging community to elicit help in her focus with Bread and Roses, including Pete Seeger , Paul Winter , Odetta , Judy Collins , Taj Mahal , Lily Tomlin , Carlos Santana , and Bonnie Raitt , amongst others. In 2000 alone, Bread and Roses brought performers to play at more than 500 concerts in 82 institutions. Death and legacy [ edit ] Fariña died of neuroendocrine cancer , at her home in California, on July 18, 2001, at age 56. The life of Mimi Fariña is partially chronicled in David Hajdu 's book, Positively 4th Street . She also has a cameo appearance in the Armistead Maupin novel Tales of the City , set in San Francisco in the 1970s. She is referred to by Carol Ward ( Catherine O'Hara ) in the US television series Six Feet Under , in which it is stated that Fariña had been involved with the production of the (fictitious) Pack Up Your Sorrows: The Mimi Fariña Story . She was also the subject of her sister Joan Baez's 1969 song " Sweet Sir Galahad ". She appears in the 2012 documentary "Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation" by Laura Archibald . Selected discography [ edit ] 1965: Celebrations for a Grey Day with Richard Fariña , Vanguard Records 1966: Reflections in a Crystal Wind with Richard Fariña, Vanguard Records 1968: Memories with Richard Fariña, Vanguard Records 1971: Take Heart with Tom Jans A&M Records 1985: Mimi Farina Solo Rounder Records 2001: The Complete Vanguard Recordings with Richard Fariña, Vanguard Records Richard George Fariña (March 8, 1937 – April 30, 1966) was an American writer and folksinger. Early years and education[edit] Richard Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Cuban-Galician and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an engineering major, but later switching to English. While at Cornell he published short stories for local literary magazines and for national periodicals, including Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle. Fariña became good friends with Thomas Pynchon, David Shetzline, and Peter Yarrow while at Cornell. He was suspended for alleged participation in a student demonstration against campus regulations and although he later resumed his status as a student, he ultimately dropped out in 1959, just before graduation. Ascent on Greenwich Village folk scene[edit] Back in Manhattan, Fariña became a regular patron of the White Horse Tavern, the well-known Greenwich Village tavern frequented by poets, artists, and folksingers, where he befriended Tommy Makem. It was there that he met Carolyn Hester, a successful folk singer. They married eighteen days later. Fariña appointed himself Hester's agent; they toured worldwide while Fariña worked on his novel and Carolyn performed gigs. Fariña was present when Hester recorded her third album at Columbia studios during September 1961, where a then-little-known Bob Dylan played harmonica on several tracks. Fariña became a good friend of Dylan's; their friendship is a major topic of David Hajdu's book, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. Fariña then traveled to Europe, where he met Mimi Baez, the teenage sister of Joan Baez in the spring of 1962. Hester divorced Fariña soon thereafter, and Fariña married 17-year-old Mimi in April 1963. Thomas Pynchon was the best man. They moved to a small cabin in Carmel, California, where they composed songs with a guitar and Appalachian dulcimer. They debuted their act as "Richard & Mimi Fariña" at the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1964 and signed a contract with Vanguard Records. They recorded their first album, Celebrations For a Grey Day,[1] with the help of Bruce Langhorne, who had previously played for Dylan. Due to his brief life, Fariña's musical output was limited. The Fariñas released three albums, one was released after his death. Fariña, like Dylan and others of this time, was considered a protest singer, and several of his songs are overtly political. Several critics have considered Fariña to be a major folk music talent of the 1960s. ("If Richard had survived that motorcycle accident, he would have easily given Dylan a run for his money." – Ed Ward). His best-known songs are, "Pack Up Your Sorrows" and "Birmingham Sunday", the latter of which was recorded by Joan Baez and became better known after it became the theme song to Spike Lee's film, 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama during 1963. At the time of his death, Fariña also was producing an album for his sister-in-law, Joan Baez. She ultimately decided not to release the album, however, though two of the songs were included on Fariña's posthumous album, and another, a cover version of Fariña's "Pack up Your Sorrows", co-written by Fariña with the third Baez sister, Pauline Marden, was released as a single in 1966; it has since been included in a number of Baez' compilation albums. On 27 April 1968 Fairport Convention recorded a live version of "Reno Nevada" for French TV programme Bouton Rouge, featuring vocals by Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews. They then recorded the song for a BBC session later in the same year, this time with Dyble's replacement in the band Sandy Denny, subsequently included on the album, Heyday. Denny also recorded "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" for her album, Sandy. Matthews later recorded "Reno Nevada" and "Morgan the Pirate" for his album, "If You Saw Thro' My Eyes"; other Farina compositions appeared on subsequent solo albums and on recordings by Matthews' band, Plainsong. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me[edit] Fariña is known for his novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, originally published by Random House in 1966. The novel, based largely on his college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque novel, set in 1958 in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and mostly at Cornell University (called "Mentor University" in the novel). The protagonist is Gnossos Pappadopoulis, who enjoys dope, Red Cap ale and retsina, attacks authority figures with anarchic glee and lusts after the girl in the green knee-socks while searching for the right karma. The book has become something of a cult classic among fans of 1960s and counterculture literature. Thomas Pynchon, who later dedicated his book, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), to Fariña, described Fariña's novel as "coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch... hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful, and outrageous all at the same time." Death[edit] On April 30, 1966, two days after the publication of his novel, Fariña attended a book-signing ceremony at a Carmel Valley Village bookstore, the Thunderbird. Later that day, while at a party to celebrate his wife Mimi's twenty-first birthday, Fariña saw a guest with a motorcycle, who later gave Fariña a ride up Carmel Valley Road, heading east toward Cachagua. At an S-turn the driver lost control. The motorcycle tipped over on the right side of the road, came back to the other side, and tore through a barbed wire fence into a field where a small vineyard now exists. The driver survived, but Fariña was killed instantly. According to Pynchon's preface to Been Down..., the police said the motorcycle must have been traveling at 90 miles per hour (140 km/h), even though "a prudent speed" would have been 30 miles per hour (48 km/h). Fariña was buried in a simple grave; its marker emblazoned with a peace sign, at Monterey City Cemetery, in Monterey, California. Fariña's widow helped to gather a collection of his final poetry and short stories, which was released as, Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone. Joan Baez's song, "Sweet Sir Galahad", commemorates Fariña's death, the grieving of his widow Mimi, and Mimi's eventual recovery and remarriage. Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow is dedicated to Fariña.