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Joan Baez

JOAN BAEZ

YEAR

2017

INDUCTED BY

Jackson Browne

CATEGORY

Performers

Joan Baez breathed new life into folk music in the 1960s, powering rock music’s turn toward social and political consciousness.

Baez’s unwavering dedication to activism shows that volume isn’t the only way to be loud—and totally rock and roll.

Joan Baez

Joan Baez

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Arthur Levy

For decades, Joan Baez has maintained that she is not a rock & roll artist.

But back in 1958, amid all the Harry Belafonte and traditional folk covers on the demo recording she made after graduating from Palo Alto High School, there she is, having her way with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ “Annie Had a Baby,” the Coasters’ “Young Blood” (via Leiber-Stoller and Doc Pomus), and Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba.”

Rock history has always harbored its own regard for Joan Baez (b. 1941), American folk icon, who now somewhat bemusedly finds herself inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As she said in her understated way when she got word in December, “As part of the folk music boom, which contributed to and influenced the rock revolution of the sixties, I am proud that some of the songs I sang made their way into the rock lexicon.”

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