Joan Baez
b. 1941
The soprano of the American folk revival, whose 1960 recording of “Donna, Donna” turned a Yiddish theater (ייִדיש טעאַטער) song into an English protest standard.
was born in New York in 1941 and came up through the Cambridge folk clubs and the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. At nineteen she recorded her Vanguard debut, (1960); among its traditional ballads sat “Donna, Donna” — and ’s English of and ’s “Dona Dona.” The record made her famous, and she sang the calf-and-swallow lyric at civil-rights gatherings through the decade. She has spent a career interpreting other people’s songs (Dylan’s among the first) and tying the voice to nonviolence, civil rights, and human rights. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.
Songs on the site
In context
Where Joan Baez worked
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- [1]Wikipedia