In 1963, 12-year-old Janis Ian was living in East Orange, New Jersey, a predominantly Black neighborhood at the time. She’d begun playing guitar at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, NY, two years earlier, encouraged by counselors and visitors like Eric Weissberg and Pete Seeger. At home, the sounds of Joan Baez, Odetta and Nina Simone emanated from her record player. That summer, Ian was looking at the liner notes of a Buffy Ste. Marie album and realized Buffy had written one of the songs herself. So, Ian tried writing one, too.

A few months later, she sent a copy of “Hair of Spun Gold” exactly as it’s written here to Broadside Magazine. The moving ballad, modeled after an English folk song about a girl too young to get married but forced into it nonetheless, was published shortly afterward, and Ian made her first public appearance at a Broadside “hoot” the following spring.

“People say, ‘oh my God, you were only 12 when you wrote this,’ but most 12-year-olds are pretty deep,” Ian said. “When you hit that age, you start really being a human and thinking about things, disagreeing with folks in your community.”