Joan Baez Informations

Joan Chandos Baez (/baɪz/; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.

Baez is generally regarded as a folk singer, but her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country and gospel music. She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 and Joan Baez in Concert, all achieved gold record status. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many others. She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts. On her later albums she has found success interpreting the work of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant and Joe Henry.

Baez's acclaimed songs include "Diamonds and Rust" and covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". She is also known for "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Forever Young", "Here's to You", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". Baez performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment. Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.

Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Joan's grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left the Catholic Church to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when her father was two years old. Her father, Albert Baez (1912–2007), was born in Puebla, Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to—and advocated for—a Spanish-speaking congregation. Albert first considered becoming a minister but instead turned to the study of mathematics and physics and received his PhD degree at Stanford University in 1950. Albert was later credited as a co-inventor of the x-ray microscope. Joan's cousin, John C. Baez, is a mathematical physicist.

Her mother, Joan Baez (née Bridge), referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan", was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1913 as the second daughter of an English Anglican priest who claimed to be descended from the Dukes of Chandos. Born in April 1913, she died on April 20, 2013, days after her one hundredth birthday.

Baez had two sisters – Pauline Thalia Baez Bryan (1938–2016), who was sometimes professionally known as Pauline Marden; and Margarita Mimi Baez Fariña (1945–2001) who was generally better known as Mimi Fariña. To varying degrees, both women were also political activists and musicians like their sister. They are also notable for having been married to other American artists – Pauline (briefly) to painter Brice Marden and Mimi to author and musician Richard Fariña with whom she collaborated for several years.

The Baez family converted to Quakerism during Joan's early childhood, and she has continued to identify with the tradition, particularly in her commitment to pacifism and social issues. While growing up, Baez was subjected to racial slurs and discrimination due to her Mexican heritage. Consequently, she became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career. She declined to play in any white student venues that were segregated, which meant that when she toured the Southern states, she would play only at black colleges.

Joan graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1958.

Due to her father's work with UNESCO, their family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq. Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence.Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of her life, "looming larger than music".

The opening line of Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With is "I was born gifted" (referencing her singing voice, which she explained was given to her and for which she can take no credit). A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction. When Baez was 13, her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend took her to a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and Baez found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California Jewish congregation. A few years later in 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.

In 1958, her father accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to Massachusetts. At that time, it was in the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began performing near home in Boston and nearby Cambridge. She also performed in clubs, and attended Boston University for about six weeks. In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge, she gave her first concert. When designing the poster for the performance, Baez considered changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl, the surname of her long-time mentor, Ira Sandperl, or Maria from the song "They Call the Wind Maria". She later opted against doing so, fearing that people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Spanish. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, her boyfriend, and a few friends, resulting in a total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $25 per show.

A few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets, a family friend designed the album cover, and it was released on Veritas Records that same year as Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square. Baez later met Bob Gibson and Odetta, who were at the time two of the most prominent vocalists singing folk and gospel music. Baez cites Odetta as a primary influence along with Marian Anderson and Pete Seeger. Gibson invited Baez to perform with him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two sang two duets, "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River". The performance generated substantial praise for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice, and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following year although Columbia Records tried to sign her first. Baez later claimed that she felt she would be given more artistic license at a more "low key" label. Baez's nickname at the time, "Madonna", has been attributed to her clear voice, long hair, and natural beauty, and to her role as "Earth Mother".

Her true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues, and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. It featured many popular Child Ballads of the day and was recorded in only four days in the ballroom of New York City's Manhattan Towers Hotel. The album also included "El Preso Numero Nueve", a song sung entirely in Spanish, which she would re-record in 1974 for inclusion on her Spanish-language album, Gracias a la Vida.

She made her New York concert debut on November 5, 1960, at the 92nd Street Y and on November 11, 1961, Baez played her first major New York concert at a sold-out performance at Town Hall. Robert Shelton, folk critic of the New York Times, praised the concert, saying, "That superb soprano voice, as lustrous and rich as old gold, flowed purely all evening with a wondrous ease. Her singing (unwound) like a spool of satin." Years later when Baez thought back to that concert, she laughed, saying: "I remember in 1961 my manager sending me this newspaper (clipping) in the mail (which) read, 'Joan Baez Town Hall Concert, SRO.' I thought SRO meant 'sold right out.' I was so innocent of it all."

Her second release, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (1961), went "gold", as did Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 (1962) and Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 contained strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 and its second counterpart, were unique in that unlike most live albums they contained only new songs rather than established favorites. It was Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 that featured Baez's first-ever Dylan cover.

From the early-to-mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan, and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and Bonnie Raitt. On November 23, 1962, Baez appeared on the cover of Time Magazine—a rare honor then for a musician.

Though primarily an album artist, several of Baez' singles have charted, the first being her 1965 cover of Phil Ochs' "There but for Fortune", which became a mid-level chart hit in the U.S. and a top-ten single in the United Kingdom.

Baez added other instruments to her recordings on Farewell, Angelina (1965), which features several Dylan songs interspersed with more traditional fare.

Deciding to experiment with different styles, Baez turned to Peter Schickele, a classical music composer, who provided classical orchestration for her next three albums: Noël (1966), Joan (1967), and Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time (1968). Noël was a Christmas album of traditional material, while Baptism was akin to a concept album, featuring Baez reading and singing poems written by celebrated poets such as James Joyce, Federico García Lorca, and Walt Whitman. Joan featured interpretations of work by then-contemporary composers, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Tim Hardin, Paul Simon, and Donovan.

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