Quiet Places: Buffy's Uplifting and
Ethereal Sound!

by Alan Nielsen

Buffy Sainte-Marie's final effort for Vanguard never recieved its due, as it lacked the hit singles of its predecessor, Moonshot. However, to many fans, Quiet Places contains several classics. The uplifting title track and the ethereal "Jewels of Hanalei" are often cited as fan favorites, while "Just That Kind of Man" would surely have been a huge hit, as it is one of her most accessible, radio-friendly recordings. Her covers of Carole King's "Eventually" and Joni Mitchell's "For Free" and Randy Newman's "Have You Seen My Baby" also had hit single potential in 1973, when the album was released.

The marketing problem with this album lays largely with the Vanguard label. Although blacklisted in the US, she had just eked out a top 40 hit with "Mister Can't You See" and a number one hit in Boise with "Indian Cowboy". To the writer's knowledge, no singles were released from Quiet Places. The aforementioned tracks would have been an appropriate follow up to the success of Moonshot. In this writer's opinion, in fact, "Eventually" and "Just That Kind of Man" would have eclipsed her previous successes.

Not only were there no singles released, but Vanguard didn't seem to put much thought behind the song order. When a listener samples an album called "Quiet Places", he would expect at least the opening track to draw in the listener by meeting those expectations. Instead, Vanguard chose to open with the the raucous "Why You Been Gone So Long" and buried most of the best tracks to the middle and end of the album. For instance, the humorous "Caleb" would have worked much better to close out the album while "The Jewels of Hanalei" would have lulled listeners to submission as an opener.

In defense of Buffy's divergent styles, the criticism that Buffy endured for working with rock and country bands on this and other albums was entirely overblown. She had never asked to be pigeonholed as a "moldy fig" folk singer in the first place. In fact, she and her contemporaries had been branching out to other styles for many years (notably Bob Dylan's infamous "going electric" escapade in the 1960's) by the time Quiet Places was released. Quiet Places forshadowed her dynamic work with MCA and ABC and certainly deserves another look and listen.