Joan Baez was born on January
9, 1941 in Staten Island, New York, the second of three daughters to
Dr. Albert Baez, a physicist, and Joan Bridge Baez. Her mother was
English-Scotish, the daughter of an Episcopalian Minister and a
professor of drama who had migrated to the United States, and her
father was of Mexican parentage, the son of a minister. Her father's
activities as a physicist, researcher and UNESCO consultant took him to
many parts of the country, and Joan's childhood was spent first in the
small town of Clarence Center, New York, and then in Redlands,
California. She developed both her social consciousness and her love
for music at a relatively tender age. Picking up the ukulele, Baez made
her performing debut at a high school talent show when she was 14,
performing "Honey Love." There she began singing both for the high
school choir and for herself, and learned to accompany herself on the
guitar.
When her father took a job at M.I.T. a few years later,the family moved
to Boston, where for a short time she studied drama at Boston
University. She enrolled at the university and soon began singing at
the Boston coffee houses, colleges and later concert halls along the
East Coast to increasingly large crowds. Then came her 1959 Newport
Folk Festival debut. Baez signed with the then relatively small folk
label, Vanguard, which first released her performances at the Newport
Folk Festival, and then released her first album, Joan Baez, in 1960
and the rest, as they say, is history...
Her admirers transcend musical strata and national boundaries. Her
growth as a musician and as a human being have proceeded hand in hand.
Enrolling herself in the Civil Rights cause and the peace movement, a
spokesman for non-violent resistance to and protest against immoral
authority, she has refused to pay taxes that go to escalate the war in
Vietnam, and has sung at almost every historic demonstration, and
fosters a school for non-violent protest in California.
"My devotion to non-violence and social change
formed long before I picked up a ukulele and will go on until I fall
into the grave." JOAN BAEZ THE TIMES: JANUARY 1993
