'Joan Baez' (qv) was the middle daughter of Albert Vinicio and Joan Bridge Baez. At age 10, her father took a job (and the family) to Baghdad, Iraq, for a year, after which they moved to Palo Alto, CA, home of Stanford University. In 1956, she bought her first guitar and heard 'Martin Luther King' (qv), Jr.'s lecture on nonviolence; the following year, she heard Ira Sandperl, a Gandhian scholar, who also influenced her strongly. She graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1958, failed with a demo album, and move the next year to Massachusetts where her father had taken a teaching position at MIT. She performed at Club 47, a folk music club in Cambridge, and participated in an album "Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square". The same year, she met Odetta and Bob Gibson while she was performing at Chicago's The Gate Of Horn. Bob invited her to perform July 11 at the Newport Folk Festival, which launched her fame as a folksinger. Her first album for Vanguard, "Joan Baez" (1960), was a huge success. The following year, she met 'Bob Dylan' (qv) and released her second very successful album, followed the year later by many southern civil-rights performances and "Joan Baez in Concert" (a Grammy nominee). She launched a tax revolt as part of her protest of the Vietnam war, protested 'Pete Seeger' (qv)'s exclusion by ABC-TV, and joined in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and the civil rights march in Selma AL. In 1967, she spent two brief periods in jail for anti-war protests. In 1969, she gave birth to Gabriel Earl while his father, 'David Harris (VIII)' (qv), was serving 20 months of a three year sentence for draft resistance. In 1971, her songs were featured in the films _Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)_ (qv) (aka Sacco And Vanzetti) and "Celebration At Big Sur". A 1974 world tour included Japan, Australia, Israel, Lebanon, Tunisia and Argentina. The 1978 film _Renaldo and Clara (1978)_ (qv) featured her performances in 'Bob Dylan' (qv)'s Rolling Thunder tours. In 1980, Antioch University and Rutgers University awarded her the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters for her music and her activism. Next year, PBS aired the documentary "There But For Fortune: Joan Baez in Latin America". The albums, causes and concerts continue, far too numerous to list here.
Coordinates | 55°45′06″N37°37′04″N |
---|---|
Name | Joan Baez |
Background | solo_singer |
Birth name | Joan Chandos Báez |
Birth date | January 09, 1941 |
Origin | Staten Island, New York City, New YorkUnited States |
Occupation | Musician, Songwriter, Activist |
Instrument | vocals, guitar, piano, ukulele |
Genre | folk, folk rock, country |
Years active | 1958–present |
Label | Vanguard (1960–1971) A&M; (1972–1977) Portrait/CBS (1977–1981) Gold Castle (1987–1991) Virgin (1991–1993) Guardian (1995–2002) Koch (2003–present) |
Associated acts | Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Judy Collins, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Mimi Fariña, the Grateful Dead, Janis Ian, the Indigo Girls, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Rocker T, Dar Williams |
Website | joanbaez.com }} |
Joan Chandos Baez () (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and activist.
Baez has a distinctive vocal style, with a strong vibrato. Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.
Baez began her career performing in coffeehouses in Boston and Cambridge, and rose to fame as an unbilled performer at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. 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, and stayed on the charts for two years.
Baez has had a popular hit song with "Diamonds & Rust" and hit covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Other songs associated with Baez include "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". She performed three of the songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, helped to bring the songs of Bob Dylan to national prominence, and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment.
Baez has performed publicly for over 53 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish as well as in English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. She is regarded as a folk singer, although her music has diversified since the 1960s, encompassing everything from folk rock and pop to country and gospel music. Although a songwriter herself, Baez is generally regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, having recorded songs by The Allman Brothers Band, The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Mercedes Sosa, Woody Guthrie, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and many others. In recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of modern songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant.
Her mother, Joan Bridge Baez, referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan", was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second daughter of an English Episcopal priest. Joan Senior and Albert met at a high-school dance in Madison, New Jersey, and quickly fell in love. After their marriage, the newlyweds moved to California.
Baez had two sisters — the elder, Pauline, and the younger, Mimi Fariña. Mimi died of cancer in California in 2001.
Because of her father's work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq, where they were in 1951. Joan became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series ''American Masters, ''is the true core of [her] life, looming larger than music.''''
A few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets, a family friend designed the album cover, and it was released on Veritas Records that same year as ''Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square''. Baez later met Bob Gibson and Odetta, who was at the time one of the most prominent vocalists singing folk and gospel music. Baez cites Odetta as a primary influence along with Marian Anderson and Seeger. Gibson invited Baez to perform with him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two sang two duets, "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River". The performance generated substantial praise for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice, and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following year although Columbia Records tried to sign her first. Baez later claimed that she felt she would be given more artistic license at a more "low key" label.
Her second release, ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'' (1961) went "gold", as did ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1'' (1962) and ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2'' (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'' contained strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1'' and its second counterpart, were unique in that, unlike most live albums, they contained only new songs, rather than established favorites. It was ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2'' that featured Baez's first-ever Dylan cover. From the early to mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.
Though primarily an albums artist, several of Baez' singles have charted and the first being her 1965 cover of Phil Ochs' "There but for Fortune", which became a mid-level chart hit in the U.S. and a top-ten single in the United Kingdom. Baez added other instruments to her recordings on ''Farewell, Angelina'' (1965), which features several Dylan songs interspersed with more traditional fare. Deciding to experiment after having exhausted the folksinger-with-guitar format, Baez turned to Peter Schickele, a classical music composer, who provided classical orchestration for her next three albums: ''Noël'' (1966), ''Joan'' (1967) and ''Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time'' (1968). ''Noël'' was a Christmas album of traditional material, while ''Baptism'' was akin to a concept album, featuring Baez reading and singing poems written by celebrated poets such as James Joyce, Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman.
In 1968, Baez traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where a marathon recording session resulted in two albums. The first, ''Any Day Now'' (1968), consists exclusively of Dylan covers. The other, the country-music-infused ''David's Album'' (1969) was recorded for husband David Harris, a prominent anti-Vietnam War protester eventually imprisoned for draft resistance. Harris, a country-music fan, turned Baez toward more complex country-rock influences beginning with ''David's Album''. Later in 1968, she published her first memoir, ''Daybreak'' (by Dial Press). In 1969, her appearance at Woodstock in upstate New York afforded her an international musical and political podium, particularly upon the successful release of the documentary film ''Woodstock'' (1970). Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David" which was written for her husband after he was imprisoned for draft evasion.
Joan Baez wrote and performed a song titled "The Story of Bangladesh" at the Concert for Bangladesh, Madison Square Garden in 1971.
During this period, in late 1971, she reunited with Schickele to record two tracks, "Rejoice in the Sun" and "Silent Running" for the science-fiction film, ''Silent Running''. The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, another LP was released on Decca (DL 7-9188), and was later reissued by Varese Sarabande on black (STV-81072) and green (VC-81072) vinyl. In 1998 a limited release on CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" was released.
''Where Are You Now, My Son?'' (1973) featured a 23-minute title song which took up all of the B-side of the album. Half spoken word poem and half tape-recorded sounds, the song documented Baez's visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in December 1972, during which she and her traveling companions survived the 11-day long Christmas Bombings campaign over Hanoi and Haiphong. ''(See Vietnam War in Civil rights section below.)''
''Gracias a la Vida'' (1974) (the title song written and first performed by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra) followed and was a success in both the U.S. and Latin America. It included the song "Cucurrucucú paloma". Flirting with mainstream pop music as well as writing her own songs for ''Diamonds & Rust'' (1975), the album became the highest selling of Baez's career and spawned a second top-ten single in the form of the title track.
After ''Gulf Winds'' (1976), an album of entirely self-composed songs, and ''From Every Stage'' (1976), a live album that had Baez performing songs "from every stage" of her career, Baez again parted ways with a record label when she moved to CBS Records for ''Blowin' Away'' (1977) and ''Honest Lullaby'' (1979).
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, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 ''A Conspiracy of Hope'' tour and a guest spot on their subsequent ''Human Rights Now!'' tour.
Baez found herself without an American label for the release of ''Live Europe 83'' (1984), which was released in Europe and Canada, but not released commercially in the U.S. She did not have an American release until the album ''Recently'' (1987) on Gold Castle Records.
In 1987, Baez's second autobiography called ''And a Voice to Sing With'' was published and became a ''New York Times'' bestseller. That same year, she traveled to the Middle East to visit with and sing songs of peace for the people of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.
In May 1989, Baez performed at a music festival in communist Czechoslovakia, called Bratislavská lýra. While there, she met future Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel, whom she let carry her guitar so as to prevent his arrest by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing ''a cappella'' for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel cited her as a great inspiration and influence in that country's Velvet Revolution, the revolution in which the Soviet-dominated communist government there was overthrown.
Baez recorded two more albums with Gold Castle, ''Speaking of Dreams'', (1989) and ''Brothers in Arms'' (1991). She then landed a contract with a major label, Virgin Records, recording ''Play Me Backwards'' (1992) for Virgin shortly before the company was purchased by EMI. She then switched to Guardian, with whom she produced a live album, ''Ring Them Bells'' (1995), and a studio album, ''Gone from Danger'' (1997).
In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of then-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.
In October of that year, Baez became the first major artist to perform in a professional concert presentation on Alcatraz Island (a former U.S. federal prison) in San Francisco, California, in a benefit for her sister Mimi's Bread and Roses organization. She later returned for another concert in 1996.
On October 1, 2005, she performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Then, on January 13, 2006, Baez performed at the funeral of Lou Rawls, where she led Jesse Jackson, Sr., Wonder, and others in the singing of "Amazing Grace". On June 6, 2006, Baez joined Bruce Springsteen on stage at his San Francisco concert, where the two performed the rolling anthem "Pay Me My Money Down". In September 2006, Baez contributed a live, retooled version of her classic song "Sweet Sir Galahad" to a Starbucks's exclusive XM Artist Confidential album. In the new version, she changed the lyric "here's to the dawn of their days" to "here's to the dawn of ''her'' days", as a tribute to her late sister Mimi, about whom Baez wrote the song in 1969. Later on, October 8, 2006, she appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Her performance was kept secret from former Czech Republic President Havel until the moment she appeared on stage. Havel remains a great admirer of both Baez and her work. During Baez's next visit to Prague, in April 2007, the two met again when she performed in front of a sold-out house at Prague's Lucerna Hall, a building erected by Havel's grandfather. On December 2, 2006, she made a guest appearance at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir's Christmas Concert at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. Her participation included versions of "Let Us Break Bread Together" and "Amazing Grace". She also joined the choir in the finale of "O Holy Night".
In February 2007, Proper Records reissued her live album ''Ring Them Bells'' (1995), which featured duets with artists ranging from Dar Williams and Mimi Fariña to the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The reissue features a 16-page booklet and six unreleased live tracks from the original recording sessions, including "Love Song to a Stranger", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Geordie", "Gracias a la Vida", "The Water Is Wide" and "Stones in the Road", bringing the total tracklisting to 21 songs (on two discs). In addition, Baez recorded a duet of "Jim Crow" with John Mellencamp which appears on his album ''Freedom's Road'' (2007). He has called the album a "Woody Guthrie rock album". The recording was heavily influenced by albums from the 1960s, which is why he invited an icon from that era to appear with him. Also in February 2007, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The day after receiving the honor, she appeared at the Grammy Awards ceremony and introduced a performance by the Dixie Chicks. September 9, 2008, saw the release of the studio album ''Day After Tomorrow'', produced by Steve Earle and featuring three of his songs. On June 29, 2008, Baez performed on the Acoustic Stage at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, U.K., playing out the final set to a packed audience. On July 6, 2008, she played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. During the concert's finale, she spontaneously danced on stage with a band of African percussionists.
On August 2, 2009, Baez played at the 50th Newport Folk Festival, which also marked the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough performance at the first festival. On October 14, 2009, PBS aired an episode of its documentary series, American Masters, entitled, ''Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound''. It was produced and directed by Mary Wharton. A DVD and CD of the sound track were released at the same time.
In 1957, at age 16, Joan committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California for an air-raid drill. After the bells rang, students were to leave the school, make their way to their home air-raid shelters, and pretend they were surviving an atomic blast. Protesting what she believed to be misleading government propaganda, Baez refused to leave her seat when instructed and continued reading a book. For this act she was punished by school officials, and was ostracized by the local population for being a supposed "Communist infiltrator."
Her recording of the song "Birmingham Sunday" (1964) ,written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of ''4 Little Girls'' (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 bombing.
Baez joined King on his 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, singing for the marchers in the town of St. Jude, Alabama, as they camped the night before arriving in Montgomery. She linked arms with King to protect African-American schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi who were trying to attend "white" schools.
In 1966, she stood in the fields alongside César Chávez and California's migrant farm workers as they fought for fair wages and safe working conditions and performed at a benefit on behalf of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in December of that year. In 1972, she was at Chávez's side during his 24-day fast to draw attention to the farmworkers' struggle and can be seen singing "We Shall Overcome" during that fast in the film about the UFW, "Si Se Puede" ("It can be done").
Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California and spent over a month in jail. ''(See also David Harris section below.)''
She was a frequent participant in anti-war marches and rallies, including:
numerous protests in New York City organized by the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, starting with the March 1966 Fifth Avenue Peace Parade, a free 1967 concert at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., that had been opposed by the Daughters of the American Revolution which attracted a crowd of 30,000 to hear her anti-war message,
There were many others, culminating in Ochs's The War Is Over celebration in New York City in May 1975.
During the Christmas season 1972, Baez joined a peace delegation traveling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, and to deliver Christmas mail to American prisoners of war. During her time there, she was caught in the U.S. military's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, North Vietnam, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days.
Her disquiet at the human-rights violations of communist Vietnam made her increasingly critical of its government and she organized the May 30, 1979, publication, of a full-page advertisement (published in four major U.S. newspapers) in which the communists were described as having created a nightmare, which put her at odds with a segment of the U.S. left wing, who were uncomfortable criticizing a leftist régime. In a letter of response, Jane Fonda said she was unable to substantiate the "claims" Baez made regarding the atrocities being committed by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.
Baez' experiences regarding Vietnam's human-rights violations ultimately led her to found her own human-rights group, Humanitas International, whose focus was to target oppression wherever it occurred, criticizing right and left-wing régimes equally.
She toured Chile, Brazil and Argentina in 1981, but was prevented from performing in any of the three countries, for fear her criticism of their human-rights practices would reach mass audiences if she were given a podium. While there, she was surveiled and subjected to death threats. A film of the ill-fated tour, ''There but for Fortune'', was shown on PBS in 1982.
In 1989, after Tiananmen Massacre Baez wrote and released the song ''China'' to condemn the Chinese Communist Party for its bloody slaughter of thousands of student protesters who called for establishment of democratic republicanism.
In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea.
On July 17, 2006, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event they honored her for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.
In the 1990s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization, and performed at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March.
Her song "Altar Boy and the Thief" from ''Blowin' Away'' (1977) was written as a dedication to her gay fanbase.
In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Earle to join them in London, U.K., at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.
In the summer of 2004, Joan joined Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour" on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.
In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.
Playing at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Baez said during the introduction of a song that one reason she likes Obama is because he reminds her of another old friend of hers: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although a highly political figure throughout most of her career, Baez had never publicly endorsed a major political party candidate prior to Obama. She performed at The White House on February 10, 2010 as part of an evening celebrating the music associated with the civil rights movement, performing "We Shall Overcome".
Baez first met Dylan in 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in New York City's Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her debut album and her popularity as the emerging "Queen of Folk" was on the rise. Baez was initially unimpressed with the "urban hillbilly", but was impressed with one of Dylan's first compositions, "Song to Woody", and remarked that she would like to record it.
At the start, Dylan was more interested in Baez's younger sister, Mimi, but under the glare of media scrutiny that began to surround Baez and Dylan, their relationship began to develop into something more.
By 1963, Baez had already released three albums, two of which had been certified gold, and she invited Dylan on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival. The two performed the Dylan composition "With God on Our Side", a performance that set the stage for many more duets like it in the months and years to come. Typically while on tour, Baez would invite Dylan to sing on stage partly by himself and partly with her, much to the chagrin of her fans.
Before meeting Dylan, Baez's topical songs were very few: "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", "We Shall Overcome", and an assortment of negro spirituals. Baez would later say that Dylan's songs seemed to update the topics of protest and justice.
By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of the U.K., their relationship had slowly begun to fizzle out after they had been romantically involved off and on for nearly two years. The tour and simultaneous disintegration of their relationship was documented in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film ''Dont Look Back'' (1967).
Baez toured with Dylan as a performer on his Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975–76. She sang four songs with Dylan on the live album of the tour, ''The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue'', released in 2002. Baez appeared with Dylan in the one hour TV special, ''Hard Rain'', filmed at Fort Collins, Colorado, in May 1976. Baez also starred as 'The Woman In White' in the film ''Renaldo and Clara'' (1978), directed by Bob Dylan and filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue. Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 along with Carlos Santana.
Baez discussed her relationship with Dylan in Martin Scorsese's documentary film ''No Direction Home'' (2005), and in the PBS American Masters biography of Baez, ''How Sweet the Sound'' (2009).
Baez penned at least two songs about Dylan. In "To Bobby", written in 1972, she urged Dylan to return to political activism, while in "Diamonds & Rust", the title track from her 1975 album, she revisited her feelings for him in warm, yet direct terms.
References to Baez in Dylan's songs are far less clear. Baez herself has suggested that she was the subject of both "Visions of Johanna" and "Mama, You Been on My Mind", although the latter was more likely about his relationship with Suze Rotolo. As for "Visions of Johanna", "She Belongs to Me" and other songs alleged to have been written about Baez, neither Dylan nor biographers such as Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray have had anything definitive to say one way or the other regarding the subject of these songs.
In October 1967, Baez, her mother, and nearly seventy other women were arrested at the Oakland, California, Armed Forces Induction Center for blocking the doorways of the building to prevent entrance by young inductees, and in support of young men who refused military induction. They were incarcerated in the Santa Rita Jail, and it was here that Baez met David Harris, who was kept on the men's side but who still managed to visit with Baez regularly.
The two formed a close bond upon their release and Baez moved into his draft-resistance commune in the hills above Stanford, California. The pair had known each other for three months when they decided to wed. After confirming the news to The Associated Press, media outlets began dedicating ample press to the impending nuptials (at one point, ''Time'' magazine referred to it as the "Wedding of the Century".)
After finding a pacifist preacher, a church outfitted with peace signs and writing a blend of Episcopalian and Quaker wedding vows, Baez and Harris married each other in New York City on March 26, 1968. Her friend Judy Collins sang at the ceremony. After the wedding, Baez and Harris moved into a home in the Los Altos Hills on of land called Struggle Mountain, part of a commune, where they tended gardens and were strict vegetarians.
A short time later, Harris refused induction to the armed forces and was indicted. On July 16, 1969, Harris was taken by federal marshals to prison. Baez was visibly pregnant in public in the months that followed, most notably at Woodstock Festival, where she performed a handful of songs in the early morning. The documentary film ''Carry it On'' was produced during this period, and was released in 1970. The film's behind-the-scenes looks at Harris's views and arrest and Baez on her subsequent performance tour was positively reviewed in ''Time Magazine'' and the ''New York Times''.
Among the songs Baez wrote about this period of her life are "A Song For David", "Myths", "Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)" and "Fifteen Months" (the amount of time Harris was imprisoned.)
Their son, Gabriel, was born in December 1969. Harris was released from Texas prison after 15 months, but the relationship began to dissolve and the couple divorced amicably in 1973. They shared custody of Gabriel, who primarily lived with Baez. Explaining the split, Baez wrote in her autobiography, "I am made to live alone." Baez and Harris remained on friendly terms throughout the years; they reunited on camera for the 2009 ''American Masters'' documentary for PBS. , she has not remarried. Their son Gabriel is a drummer and occasionally tours with his mother.
Baez's son, percussionist Gabriel Harris, has been a member of her touring band in recent years; he and his wife Pamela live with their daughter Jasmine, in close proximity to Baez' home in Woodside. Baez' cousin, Peter Baez, was a medical marijuana activist. Another cousin, John C. Baez, is a mathematical physicist.
; Video links
;Audio links
Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:American anti–death penalty activists Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:Hispanic and Latino American women in activism
Category:American buskers Category:American environmentalists Category:American female guitarists
Category:American folk singers Category:American humanitarians Category:American musicians of English descent Category:American musicians of Mexican descent Category:American musicians of Scottish descent Category:American pacifists
Category:American Quakers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American sopranos Category:American tax resisters Category:Anti-poverty advocates Category:Civil rights activists Category:E1 Music artists Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:Nonviolence advocates Category:Palo Alto High School alumni Category:People from Staten Island Category:Spanish-language singers Category:Vanguard Records artists Category:Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España recipients Category:A&M; Records artists Category:Virgin Records artists Category:English-language singers
af:Joan Baez an:Joan Baez ast:Joan Baez bn:জোয়ান বায়েজ ca:Joan Baez cs:Joan Baez cy:Joan Baez da:Joan Baez de:Joan Baez et:Joan Baez el:Τζόαν Μπαέζ es:Joan Baez eo:Joan Baez ext:Joan Baez eu:Joan Baez fa:جوآن بائز fr:Joan Baez ga:Joan Baez gl:Joan Baez ko:존 바에즈 hr:Joan Baez io:Joan Baez id:Joan Baez ia:Joan Baez it:Joan Baez he:ג'ואן באאז sw:Joan Baez la:Ioanna Baez hu:Joan Baez nah:Joan Baez nl:Joan Baez ja:ジョーン・バエズ no:Joan Baez nn:Joan Baez oc:Joan Baez pl:Joan Baez pt:Joan Baez ro:Joan Baez qu:Joan Baez ru:Баэз, Джоан scn:Joan Baez simple:Joan Baez sk:Joan Baezová sh:Joan Baez fi:Joan Baez sv:Joan Baez tr:Joan Baez vo:Joan Baez zh:琼·贝兹This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Coordinates | 55°45′06″N37°37′04″N |
---|---|
name | Joe Hill |
Birth name | Joel Emmanuel Hägglund |
birth date | October 07, 1879 |
birth place | Gävle, Sweden |
death date | November 19, 1915 |
death place | Utah, United States |
Death cause | firing squad |
Other names | Joseph Hillström |
occupation | labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World |
Footnotes | }} |
Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle (Sweden), and also known as Joseph Hillström (October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915) was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the "Wobblies"). A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco. Hill, as an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular song writer and cartoonist for the radical union. His most famous songs include "The Preacher and the Slave", "The Tramp", "There is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which generally express the harsh but combative life of itinerant workers, and the perceived necessity of organizing to improve conditions for working people.
In 1914, John G. Morrison, a Salt Lake City area grocer and former policeman, and his son were shot and killed by two men. The same evening, Hill arrived at a doctor's office with a gunshot wound, and briefly mentioned a fight over a woman. Yet Hill was reluctant to explain further, and he was later accused of the grocery store murders on the basis of his injury. Hill was convicted of the murders in a controversial trial. Following an unsuccessful appeal, political debates, and international calls for clemency from high profile people and workers' organizations, Hill was executed in November, 1915. After his death, he was memorialized by several folk songs. His life and death have inspired books and poetry.
Joe Hill's frequently speculated upon love relationship remained mostly conjecture for nearly a century. A biography published in 2011, said to expand our knowledge of the Joe Hill case "in really dramatic ways," reveals new information about Hill's ostensible alibi, which was never introduced at his trial. According to the biography, Joe Hill and his friend and fellow countryman, Otto Appelquist, were rivals for the attention of twenty year old Hilda Erickson, a member of the family with whom the two men were lodging. In a recently discovered letter, Erickson confirmed her relationship with the two men, and the rivalry between them. The letter indicates that when she first discovered Hill was injured, he explained to her that Appelquist had shot him, apparently due to jealousy.
In 1902, when about 23, Joe Hill and his brother Paul emigrated to the United States where he became a migrant laborer, moving from New York City to Cleveland, Ohio, and eventually to the west coast. He was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the 1906 earthquake. Hill joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies around 1910, when he was working on the docks in San Pedro, California. In late 1910 he wrote a letter to the IWW newspaper ''Industrial Worker'', identifying himself as a member of the Portland, Oregon IWW local chapter.
On January 10, 1914, John G. Morrison and his son Arling were killed in their Salt Lake City butcher store by two armed intruders masked in red bandannas. The police first thought it was a crime of revenge, for nothing had been stolen and the elder Morrison had been a police officer, possibly creating many enemies.
On the same evening, Joe Hill appeared on the doorstep of a local doctor, bearing a bullet wound. Hill said that he had been shot in an argument over a woman, whom he refused to name. The doctor reported that Hill was armed with a pistol.
Considering Morrison's past as a police officer, several men he had arrested were at first considered suspects; 12 people were arrested in the case before Hill was arrested and charged with the murder. A red bandanna was found in Hill's room. The pistol purported to be in Hill's possession at the doctor's office was not found.
Hill resolutely denied that he was involved in the robbery and killing of Morrison. He said that when he was shot, his hands were over his head, and the bullet hole in his coat — four inches below the bullet wound in his back — seemed to support this claim. Hill did not testify at his trial, but his lawyers pointed out that four other people were treated for bullet wounds in Salt Lake City that same night, and that the lack of robbery and Hill's unfamiliarity with Morrison left him with no motive.
The prosecution, for its part, produced a dozen eyewitnesses who said that the killer resembled Hill, including 13-year-old Merlin Morrison, the victims' son and brother, who said "That's not him at all" upon first seeing Hill, but later identified him as the murderer. The jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of murder.
An appeal to the Utah Supreme Court was unsuccessful. Orrin N. Hilton, the lawyer representing Hill during the appeal, declared: "The main thing the state had on Hill was that he was an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty. Hill tried to keep the IWW out of [the trial]... but the press fastened it upon him."
In a letter to the court, Hill continued to deny that the state had a right to inquire into the origins of his wound, leaving little doubt that the judges would affirm the conviction. Chief Justice Daniel Straup wrote that his unexplained wound was "a distinguishing mark," and that "the defendant may not avoid the natural and reasonable inferences of remaining silent."
In an article for the socialist newspaper ''Appeal to Reason'', Hill wrote: "Owing to the prominence of Mr Morrison, there had to be a 'goat' [scapegoat] and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live anyway, and was therefore duly selected to be 'the goat'."
The case turned into a major media event. President Woodrow Wilson, the blind and deaf author Helen Keller, and people in Sweden all became involved in a bid for clemency. It generated international union attention, and critics charged that the trial and conviction were unfair.
In a new biography published in 2011, William M. Adler concludes that Hill was probably innocent of murder (he advances another candidate as the perpetrator), but also suggests that Hill came to see himself as worth more to the labor movement as a dead martyr than he was alive, and that this understanding may have influenced his decisions not to testify at the trial and subsequently to spurn all chances of a pardon. He reports that evidence pointed to early police suspect Frank Z. Wilson and also discovered a letter from the woman Hill was involved with, Hilda Erickson, who wrote that Hill had told her he had been shot by her former fiance.
That same day, a dynamite bomb was discovered at the Tarrytown estate of John D. Archbold, President of the Standard Oil Company. Police theorized the bomb was planted by anarchists and I.W.W. radicals as a protest against Hill's execution. The bomb was discovered by a gardener, who found four sticks of dynamite, weighing a pound each, half hidden in a rut in a driveway fifty feet from the front entrance of the residence. The dynamite sticks were bound together by a length of wire, fitted with percussion caps, and wrapped with a piece of paper matching the color of the driveway, a path used by Archbold in going to or from his home by automobile. The bomb was later defused by police.
Just prior to his execution, Hill had written to Bill Haywood, an IWW leader, saying, "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize... Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah."
His last will, which was eventually set to music by Ethel Raim, founder of the group The Pennywhistlers, reads:
''My body? Oh, if I could choose ''I would to ashes it reduce, ''And let the merry breezes blow, ''My dust to where some flowers grow.
''Perhaps some fading flower then ''Would come to life and bloom again. ''This is my Last and final Will. ''Good Luck to All of you, ''Joe Hill
In 1988 it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by the United States Postal Service in 1917 because of its "subversive potential". The envelope, with a photo affixed, captioned, "Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915," as well as its contents, was deposited at the National Archives. A story appeared in the United Auto Workers' magazine ''Solidarity'' and a small item followed it in ''The New Yorker'' Magazine. Members of the IWW in Chicago quickly laid claim to the contents of the envelope.
After some negotiations, the last of Hill's ashes (but not the envelope that contained them) was turned over to the IWW in 1988. The weekly ''In These Times'' ran notice of the ashes and invited readers to suggest what should be done with them. Suggestions varied from enshrining them at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC to Abbie Hoffman's suggestion that they be eaten by today's "Joe Hills" like Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked. Bragg did indeed swallow a small bit of the ashes and still carries Shocked's share for the eventual completion of Hoffman's last prank. The majority of the ashes were cast to the wind in the US, Canada, Sweden, Australia, and Nicaragua. The ashes sent to Sweden were only partly cast to the wind. The main part was interred in the wall of a union office in Landskrona, a minor city in the south of the country, with a plaque commemorating Hill. That room is now the reading room of the local city library.
One small packet of ashes was scattered at a 1989 ceremony which unveiled a monument to IWW coal miners buried in Lafayette, Colorado. Six unarmed strikers were machine-gunned by Colorado state police in 1927 in the Columbine Mine Massacre. Until 1989 the graves of five of these men were unmarked. Another famous Wobbly, Carlos Cortez, scattered Joe Hill's ashes on the graves at the commemoration.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the execution of Joe Hill, Philip S. Foner published a book, ''The Case of Joe Hill'', about the trial and subsequent events, which concludes that the case was a miscarriage of justice.
Ralph Chaplin wrote a tribute poem/song called "Joe Hill" and referred to him in his song "Red November, Black November."
Phil Ochs wrote and recorded a different, original song called "Joe Hill", using a traditional melody found in the song "John Hardy", which tells a much more detailed story of Joe Hill's life and death, and includes the lines that have since been associated with Ochs' own life and death, "It's the life of a rebel that he chose to live; It's the death of a rebel that he died". Ochs' song concludes with Hill's words, "This is my last and final will; Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill, Good luck to all of you."
Bob Dylan claims that Hill's story was one of his inspirations to begin writing his own songs. His song "I dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is loosely based around the story and Robinson's version.
Gibbs M. Smith wrote a biography "Joe Hill", which was later turned into the 1971 movie ''Joe Hill'' also known as ''The Ballad of Joe Hill'' directed by Bo Widerberg.
In his book ''An Undividable Glow'' , Robert Brady speaks about an area of Manchester, England as Cheetham "Joe" Hill.
In 1995 the first "Raise Your Banners" festival of political song was held in Sheffield, inspired by the 90th anniversary of the death of Joe Hill. Sheffield Socialist choir which was formed in 1988 organised the event and performed an arrangement by Nigel Wright of the Earl Robinson song about Joe Hill. Since then the festival has been held roughly every two years, being held in Bradford in November 2007 and 2009.
In 1980 Posten AB, the Swedish postal service, issued a Joe Hill postage stamp. Red on a white background with the lyrics in English "We'll have freedom, love and health/When the grand red flag is flying, In the Workers' Commonwealth." The stamp cost SKr 1,70 which was the amount for airmail to the United States.
Category:1879 births Category:1915 deaths Category:People from Gävle Category:American folklore Category:Industrial Workers of the World leaders Category:American labor unionists Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:History of Utah Category:People executed for murder Category:People executed by firing squad Category:Joan Baez songs Category:20th-century executions by the United States Category:People executed by Utah Category:Executed American people Category:Swedish people executed abroad Category:Deaths by firearm in Utah Category:People convicted of murder by Utah Category:Swedish emigrants to the United States
ca:Joe Hill da:Joe Hill de:Joe Hill es:Joe Hill eo:Joe Hill fa:جو هیل fr:Joe Hill (chanteur) it:Joe Hill hu:Joe Hill no:Joe Hill nn:Joe Hill pl:Joe Hill pt:Joe Hill ro:Joe Hill ru:Джо Хилл fi:Joe Hill sv:Joe Hill
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.