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Folk Musician, Songwriter and Activist
Birth date: January 9, 1941
 Joan was born the same year as me and our futures would be linked, but at this time to even think about it would be preposterous. She had one record out on the Vanguard label called JOAN BAEZ and I'd seen her on TV. ... She was wicked looking -- shiny black hair that hung down over the curve of slender hips, drooping lashes, partly raised, no Raggedy Ann doll. The sight of her made me high. All that and then there was her voice. A voice that drove out bad spirits. It was like she'd come down from another planet.
-- from CHRONICLES
Before Bob Dylan met Joan Baez, he was a bit in awe of her -- she was beautiful, convincingly eerie in her interpretations of traditional folk songs, already nationally known in her late teens, and strikingly different from the other female folk singers who were on the scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In CHRONICLES, Dylan says that no matter how irrational it seemed because of the vast gulfs of geography and professional accomplishment that lay between them when he was still living in Minnesota, he intuitively knew that his voice would complement hers, and that she would make a great singing partner. In a few short years, that idea became a reality. Baez, who was performing in Cambridge in the early 1960s, would frequently come down to New York City to visit the folk clubs. Baez describes their first meeting in NO DIRECTION HOME:
I first laid eyes on Bob in Gerde's Folk City. I had been told about him: this guy's a genius, he writes these incredible songs, he admires Woody Guthrie, and all this stuff. I was always very dubious, you know, when people raved about somebody other than myself, ha, ha, ha. But I went. And sure enough, he was everything that they had said he was.
Baez got to know Bob Dylan, and she began inviting him onstage during her performances. After Dylan and Suze Rotolo's relationship ended, he and Baez were romantically as well as professionally involved for a few years -- in some people's minds, they were the king and queen of folk music -- but things soured during his 1965 tour of England. Baez had come along with the expectation that Dylan would invite her onstage, but at that point in his career, he didn't want to share the spotlight with her. In 1975 and 1976, she was part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, and she also appeared in his 1978 film, RENALDO AND CLARA.
Joan Baez was born in 1941 in Staten Island, New York. Her father was a physicist, and she moved quite a bit during her childhood, living in New York State and California. When her father went to work at MIT, her family moved to Boston and she briefly studied drama at Boston University. She also began performing at the local folk clubs in the Boston/Cambridge area, most notably at Club 47, and soon began performing at colleges and in concert halls on the East Coast. She appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, and released her first album for the Vanguard label in 1960. At around the time she met Bob Dylan, she became increasingly interested in political causes, particularly the civil rights movement; later in the 1960s she became an active participant in protests against the war in Vietnam. In 1968, she married David Harris, a well-known antiwar activist who later was imprisoned for draft evasion. She and Harris divorced in 1973; they have a son, Gabriel Harris. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Baez's music changed from its original focus on traditional folk to experiments with country rock and mainstream pop. She continues performing today and is still involved in political causes, including nonviolence, the plight of political prisoners, and the struggle for human rights worldwide.
SELECTED RECORDINGS
JOAN BAEZ, Vanguard VRS-9078/VSD-2077, 1960
JOAN BAEZ IN CONCERT, PART 1, Vanguard VRS-9112/VSD-2122, 1962
FAREWELL ANGELINA, Vanguard VRS-9200/VSD-79200, 1965
ANY DAY NOW, Vanguard VSD-79306/7, 1968
DAVID'S ALBUM, Vanguard VSD-79308, 1969
BLESSED ARE . . . , Vanguard VSD-6570/1, 1971
COME FROM THE SHADOWS, A&M Records SP-4339, 1972
DIAMONDS & RUST, A&M Records SP-4527, 1975
RING THEM BELLS, Guardian 72438-34989, 1995
RELATED LINKS
The Joan Baez Web Pages
www.joanbaez.com
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 about other musicians, writers, and artists who have had an impact on Bob Dylan’s music.
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