Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and 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, Bob Marley, 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 & 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.
== Links to Peel ==
thumb|220x220px
Peel rarely played tracks by Joan Baez, preferring the musically more adventurous records of her contemporary Judy Collins. By the late 1960s Baez had long since split up with Bob Dylan and was better known for her political activism than for her music; but her Baptism LP featured tracks that combined poetry, song and orchestral music in a style which suited the atmosphere of Night Ride. Peel played an extract from the album on his 09 October 1968 show.
In a review of her single, "Song Of Bangladesh", for the Singles column in Disc & Music Echo of 1st April 1972, Peel said he understood the sentiments behind the song but described it as "a very poor thing indeed", comparing it unfavourably to George Harrison's song "Bangla Desh", which he found more believable than Baez's record. Indeed it did sink without trace, unlike her version of the Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" which made the UK charts without any airplay on Top Gear (although Peel did play the Band's original version). JP admitted that he had "never been keen on Joan Baez either in her days as Dylan's lady or during the period when her husband's imprisonment seemed to be the foundation on which work was based."
Joan Baez records were absent from Peel's playlists until 1975, when he played a track on which she was featured, from an all-star album commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the Earl Scruggs Revue. On a version of the folk song "Passing Through" arranged by Leonard Cohen, Baez did an imitation of Bob Dylan, which Peel found hard to identify because Buffy Sainte-Marie also sang on the track, as did Cohen himself, the Pointer Sisters, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott.
After Peel's death, it was later found that he had five albums by Joan Baez in his Record Collection: B - all of them records she made at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s (including Any Day Now, her double LP of Bob Dylan songs) rather than the earlier LPs which made her name and influenced many female folk singers, from Sandy Denny and Bridget St. John to a girl student Peel encountered singing in the street during a visit to Bristol in 1968 (or 1969). As he mentioned on Top Gear, she told him she liked Joan Baez, but he was disappointed to learn that she'd never heard of Leonard Cohen. 
== Shows Played ==
;thumb|220x220px1968
*09 October 1968: Extract From LP Baptism - A Journey Through Our Times (Vanguard)
;1969
*04 June 1969: unknown Bob Dylan song
;1975
*John Peel - 1975 Extracts: (guesting with the Earl Scruggs Revue): Passing Through (LP-Anniversary Special Volume One) (CBS)
== See Also ==
*Record Collection: B
* Singles
*Disc & Music Echo: Peel Columns
== External Links ==
*Wikipedia
*Discogs
*Official Website
Category:Artists