Joan Baez

Joan Baez was born Joan Chandos Baez on January 9, 1941 in New York. Her family moved to Baghdad for a year and then to Palo Alto California. Joan bought her first guitar and listened to Martin Luther King's lecture on nonviolence. After graduation she produced a demo album but it did not go anywhere. She moved to Massachusetts where she performed at Club 47 which was a folk music club. She was a part of Folksingers "Round Harvard Square. She met Odetta and Bob Gibson in Chicago and they asked her to perform at the Newport Folk Festival. This launched her career. Her first album was Joan Baez in 1960 and was a huge success.
She worked with Bob Dylan, released her second album and worked for southern civil-rights. She participated in Vietnam War protests, Pete Seeger's exclusion by ABC-TV and joined in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. She was jailed two times for anti-war protests in 1967.
Her son, Gabriel was born while his father David Harris was serving a sentence for dodging the draft for the Vietnam War. In 1971 Joan's songs were featured in Sacco & Vanzetti and Celebration at Big Sur. She toured the world in 1974. In 1980 Antioch University and Rutgers awarded Joan with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.
Joan continued with albums, concerts, and causes for many years. She married David Harris in 1968 and they divorced in 1974. They have one child who makes musical instruments.