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Joan Baez music biography continued...

Staten Island, New York, Baez moved with her parents to Belmont, Massachusetts when she was a young girl, and it wasn't long before she picked up a guitar and gave her first folk performances at clubs in the Boston-area. A performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 generated substantial buzz for the "Barefoot Madonna" and led to a record contract with Vanguard. Her second release for the label, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 in 1961 went gold, as did Joan Baez in Concert, Parts 1 and 2 (released in 1962 and 1963, respectively). 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. Highly influenced by the British Invasion, Baez next started experimenting with the backing of other instruments besides the acoustic guitar. She released a string of country-tinged albums in the late 60s and early 70s and then moved on to pop/rock, while beginning to write her own songs. This period culminated in the gold-selling Diamonds & Rust (April 1975), which became the highest selling of Baez' career.



In 1983, Baez appeared on the Grammy Awards for the first time, performing Bob Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' in the Wind," a song she first performed twenty years earlier. Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia. She has toured on behalf of many other social and political causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 "A Conspiracy of Hope" tour, among others. Baez continued to tour and record throughout the 90s and the beginning of the new millennium, fighting injustices wherever she perceived them. Play Me Backwards (1992) won a deserved Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording as a new audience came to appreciate not only the clarity of her voice but also the courage of her convictions.