Joan Baez
- Music Department
- Actress
- Composer
Joan Baez is the middle daughter of Albert
Vinicio and Joan Bridge Baez. At age 10, her father took a job (and the
family) to Baghdad, Iraq, for a year, after which they moved to Palo
Alto, CA, home of Stanford University. In 1956, she bought her first
guitar and heard Martin Luther King,
Jr.'s lecture on nonviolence; the following year, she heard Ira
Sandperl, a Gandhian scholar, who also influenced her strongly. She
graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1958, failed with a demo album,
and move the next year to Massachusetts where her father had taken a
teaching position at MIT. She performed at Club 47, a folk music club
in Cambridge, and participated in an album "Folksingers 'Round Harvard
Square". The same year, she met Odetta and Bob Gibson while she was
performing at Chicago's "Gate of Horn". Bob invited her to perform
July 11 at the Newport Folk Festival, which launched her fame as a
folksinger. Her first album for Vanguard, "Joan Baez" (1960), was a
huge success. The following year, she met
Bob Dylan and released her second very
successful album, followed the year later by many southern civil-rights
performances and "Joan Baez in Concert" (a Grammy nominee). She
launched a tax revolt as part of her protest of the Vietnam war,
protested Pete Seeger's exclusion by ABC-TV,
and joined in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and the civil rights
march in Selma AL. In 1967, she spent two brief periods in jail for
anti-war protests. In 1969, she gave birth to Gabriel Earl while his
father, David Harris, was
serving 20 months of a three year sentence for draft resistance. In
1971, her songs were featured in the films
Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) (aka
Sacco And Vanzetti) and "Celebration At Big Sur". A 1974 world tour
included Japan, Australia, Israel, Lebanon, Tunisia and Argentina. The
1978 film
Renaldo and Clara (1978)
featured her performances in Bob Dylan's
Rolling Thunder tours. In 1980, Antioch University and Rutgers
University awarded her the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters for her
music and her activism. Next year, PBS aired the documentary "There But
For Fortune: Joan Baez in Latin America". The albums, causes and
concerts continue, far too numerous to list here.
Vinicio and Joan Bridge Baez. At age 10, her father took a job (and the
family) to Baghdad, Iraq, for a year, after which they moved to Palo
Alto, CA, home of Stanford University. In 1956, she bought her first
guitar and heard Martin Luther King,
Jr.'s lecture on nonviolence; the following year, she heard Ira
Sandperl, a Gandhian scholar, who also influenced her strongly. She
graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1958, failed with a demo album,
and move the next year to Massachusetts where her father had taken a
teaching position at MIT. She performed at Club 47, a folk music club
in Cambridge, and participated in an album "Folksingers 'Round Harvard
Square". The same year, she met Odetta and Bob Gibson while she was
performing at Chicago's "Gate of Horn". Bob invited her to perform
July 11 at the Newport Folk Festival, which launched her fame as a
folksinger. Her first album for Vanguard, "Joan Baez" (1960), was a
huge success. The following year, she met
Bob Dylan and released her second very
successful album, followed the year later by many southern civil-rights
performances and "Joan Baez in Concert" (a Grammy nominee). She
launched a tax revolt as part of her protest of the Vietnam war,
protested Pete Seeger's exclusion by ABC-TV,
and joined in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and the civil rights
march in Selma AL. In 1967, she spent two brief periods in jail for
anti-war protests. In 1969, she gave birth to Gabriel Earl while his
father, David Harris, was
serving 20 months of a three year sentence for draft resistance. In
1971, her songs were featured in the films
Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) (aka
Sacco And Vanzetti) and "Celebration At Big Sur". A 1974 world tour
included Japan, Australia, Israel, Lebanon, Tunisia and Argentina. The
1978 film
Renaldo and Clara (1978)
featured her performances in Bob Dylan's
Rolling Thunder tours. In 1980, Antioch University and Rutgers
University awarded her the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters for her
music and her activism. Next year, PBS aired the documentary "There But
For Fortune: Joan Baez in Latin America". The albums, causes and
concerts continue, far too numerous to list here.