Sunday Morning Folk: Richard & Mimi Farina

Richard and Mimi Farina put out two good albums on Vanguard Records with some pretty interesting music. I'm not the biggest fan of folk music around, but sometimes I get in the mood for it. This song "Reno Nevada" can be found on their album Celebrations for a Grey Day, released in 1965.

Richard Farina is most well known today for his novel Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me published in 1966. Mimi Farina was Joan Baez's younger sister. The two married in 1963. Farina was good friends with writer Thomas Pynchon, who dedicated his novel Gravity's Rainbow to Farina. Farina died at the age of 29 in a motorcycle accident just after the release of his only novel.

I found both albums by Richard and Mimi Farina for inexpensive prices at a used record store. I would imagine anyone looking to pick them up would find them easily enough. Farina's novel is also still in print and is worth reading as a sort of bridge between the Beats of the 1950's and the Hippies of the 1960's.