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The most accomplished interpretive folk singer of the 1960s, Joan Baez has influenced nearly every aspect of popular music in a career still
going strong. Baez is possessed of a once-in-a-lifetime soprano, which, since the late '50s, she has put in the service of folk and pop music as
well as a variety of political causes. Starting out in Boston, Baez first gained recognition at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, then cut her debut
album, Joan Baez (October 1960), for Vanguard Records. It was made up of 13 traditional songs, some of them children's ballads, given
near-definitive tr ...read more
The most accomplished interpretive folk singer of the 1960s, Joan Baez has influenced nearly every aspect of popular music in a career still
going strong. Baez is possessed of a once-in-a-lifetime soprano, which, since the late '50s, she has put in the service of folk and pop music as
well as a variety of political causes. Starting out in Boston, Baez first gained recognition at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, then cut her debut
album, Joan Baez (October 1960), for Vanguard Records. It was made up of 13 traditional songs, some of them children's ballads, given
near-definitive treatment. A moderate success on release, the album took off after the breakthrough of Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (September
1961), and both albums became huge hits, as did Baez's third album, Joan Baez in Concert (September 1962). Each album went gold
and stayed in the bestseller charts more than two years.
From 1962 to 1964, Baez was the popular face of folk music, headlining festivals and concert tours and singing at political events, including
the August 1963 March on Washington. During this period, she began to champion the work of folk songwriter Bob Dylan, and gradually her
repertoire moved from traditional material toward the socially conscious work of the emerging generation of '60s artists like him. Her albums
of this period were Joan Baez in Concert, Pt. 2 (November 1963) and Joan Baez/5 (October 1964), which contained her cover of
Phil Ochs' "There But for Fortune," a Top Ten hit in the U.K.
Like other popular folk performers, Baez was affected by the changes in popular music wrought by the appearance of the Beatles in the U.S.
in 1964 and Dylan's introduction of folk-rock in 1965, and she began to augment her simple acoustic guitar backing with other instruments,
initially on Farewell, Angelina (October 1965). It was followed by a Christmas album, Noël (October 1966), and Joan (August
1967), albums on which she was accompanied by an orchestra conducted by Peter Schickele. Baez continued to experiment in the late '60s,
releasing Baptism (June 1968), in which she recited poetry, and Any Day Now (December 1968), a double album of Dylan songs
done with country backing, which went gold.
In March 1968, Baez had married antiwar protest leader David Harris, who was imprisoned as a draft evader. Harris was a country music fan,
and Baez's turn toward country, which continued on David's Album (June 1969) and One Day at a Time (March 1970), reflected his
taste. Blessed Are... (August 1971) was a gold-selling double album that spawned a gold Top Ten hit in Baez's cover of The Band's "The
Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." It was followed by Carry It On (December 1971), the soundtrack to a documentary about Baez and
Harris. Baez switched record label affiliation to A&M Records with Come from the Shadows (May 1972), which moved her in a more pop
direction. Where Are You Now, My Son? (May 1973) included sounds taped during Baez's visit to Hanoi in December 1972.
In the late '60s and early '70s, Baez moved toward pop/rock music and also began to write her own songs, culminating in the gold-selling
Diamonds & Rust (April 1975), which was followed by the entirely self-written Gulf Winds (October 1976). Baez moved to the
Portrait label of CBS Records with Blowin' Away (June 1977), but she left the label after Honest Lullaby (May 1979), and her next
album, European Tour (1980), was released only outside the U.S. It was another seven years before she found an American record
label, Gold Castle, for Recently (1987), which was followed by the live album Diamonds & Rust in the Bullring (January 1989) and
Speaking of Dreams (October 1989). Baez moved to Virgin Records for Play Me Backwards (August 1992).
In 1993, Vanguard released Rare, Live & Classic, a three-CD boxed set retrospective. Ring Them Bells, a live album on which Baez
was joined by musical descendants like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Indigo Girls, came out on Guardian Records in 1995. Gone from
Danger, her first studio album in five years, followed in 1997, and it was another six years before the release of Dark Chords on a Big
Guitar in 2003. A November 2004 concert in New York was documented on the 2005 release Bowery Songs. Baez's 24th studio
album, Day After Tomorrow, produced by Steve Earle, was released on September 9, 2008, by Bobolink/Razor & Tie, followed by Sing
Me Home almost exactly a year later in 2009.
On January 27th, 2016, Baez celebrated her 75th birthday with a performance at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Baez performed
alongside a number of fellow artists and friends, including: David Bromberg, Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Judy Collins, David
Crosby, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Damien Rice, Paul Simon, Mavis Staples, Nano Stern and Richard Thompson. This concert was released
as a live double album with a corresponding DVD under the title 75th Birthday Celebration. « hide |
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