Today Joan Baez, one of our great folk singers, amazingly turns 70. When you think the 60s, you think of a very young Baez. The video above brings you way back (we think) to 1958, when Baez was 17, to a concert she played at the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass. While the teenage ingénue broke onto the folk scene, Bob Dylan was still a student back in Hibbing, Minnesota. Five years later, Baez introduced Dylan to the music world; the two dated for a while; and then, even while going separate ways, they put their stamp on the 60s folk scene – a story that gets well documented in the book, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. We wish our SF Bay Area neighbor a very happy 70th…
You can find this video permanently hosted in our collection of 235 Cultural Icons.
Lovely! Thanks, what a great voice.
My perfect woman. I can’t imagine anyone more beautiful or with a nicer personality. I’ve been in love with her since I was about 17 myself (now 63).
Happy birthday Joan and many of them. Thanks for everything you’ve given the world.
Beautiful clip. Happy birthday Joan.
I don’t think that she introduced Dylan to the music world, though. He was already part of the Greenwich Village Folk scene when they met. Read a textured and detailed description of those days in Alix Dobkin’s memoir, My Red Blood. http://www.alyson.com/9781593501075.html
I have always loved Joan’s music. I was looking forward to seeing a video clip of her singing or talking at age 70yrs.
When I was in my teens and twenty’s I used to walk around the house singing her songs and people thought I sounded like her! I doubted it and put it down to our similar physical features because they also said I looked like her. Then, I met her cousin in Boston (whose name now slips my mind). I met him via his then girlfriend, a classical musician acquaintance whom I had previously met in Tokyo where I was living. He told me, “gee… you really look like my cousin, Joan”. I smiled and realized for the first time that perhaps others telling me I look(ed) like her must be true after all. Strangely, we do have the same hair style both then and now.
May you live until 120yrs Joan – and anyway you will live on beyond that in the hearts and minds of many…
Suzette
Happy Birthday and truly, thank you, for your beautiful songs and their meaningfull words.
great video clip. ty.
Happy Birthday Joan!!!!!! I met you twice–once in Orlando and once in Tampa Florida. I have spoken to your son Gabe a few times about music. Thank you for making the world a more beautiful and humane place. God Bless You on your special day!!!
Sorry, but she turned 70 in January!