Joan Chandos Baez was born on 9 January 1941, in Staten Island, New York City USA, of half Mexican descent through her father, and part-English through her mother. She is a musician, songwriter, singer, and activist, best known for her contemporary folk music, having released over 30 albums during her 55 year career, and recorded songs in at least six languages. All of her efforts have helped put her net worth to where it is today.
How rich is Joan Baez? As of late-2016, sources inform us of a net worth that is at $11 million, mostly earned through a successful career in the music industry. She’s performed many genres including gospel, pop, and country, and has consistently collaborated with many other artists, and all of these achievements have ensured the position of her wealth.
Joan Baez Net Worth $11 million
Joan started her music career playing the ukulele, and later on she would become very interested in folk music after going to a concert by Pete Seeger; she would soon practice these types of songs and perform them in public, after buying her first acoustic guitar.
In 1958, Joan’s family moved to Massachusetts and she would start performing in the area in local clubs. She later attended Boston University for six weeks, but was always more interested in musical performances. In 1958 she would do her first concert at Club 47, and while very few people attended it, Club 47 liked her and invited her back to perform once a week. She would continue doing performances and recorded with a few groups, performing at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival which gained her a lot of attention, with many giving her the nickname “the barefoot Madonna”. She was offered a contract by Columbia Records, but Baez opted to go to Vanguard Records for more artistic freedom. Her net worth was established.
Her first, self-titled album was released in 1960 featuring a lot of ballads, and would sell well. The following year she released “Joan Baez, Vol. 2” which would achieve gold status, and which contained a lot of traditional music, and later on she would help promote Bob Dylan. She would then have several charting songs including “There but for Fortune” which is a cover of Phil Ochs’ song.
Eventually she started to experiment with her music, and would incorporate classical styles to her next three albums. She sang poems on the album “Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time” which was more akin to a concept album. In 1968, Joan would work on her next two albums one of which was called “Any Day Now” and consisted of Bob Dylan covers. She then started to incorporate country-rock music to her songs, and would also write her own lyrics. She subsequently used her popularity to promote social protests, singing songs about peace and human rights, being one of the first artists to do so. With her continued releases, her net worth steadily increased.
In 1971, she cut ties with Vanguard after releasing the gold-certified “Blessed Are…” She switched to A&M Records under which she would release her next six albums, which would continue to build her net worth. Her first album for the record company was “Come from the Shadows” which featured a lot of personal compositions. In 1980, she was given an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree by Rutgers University and Antioch Unversity. She would later perform at the Grammy Awards in 1983, performing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”. She continued releasing albums and then wrote an autobiography entitled “And a Voice to Sing With” which was released in 1987. She also became the first major artist to perform a concert on Alcatraz Island, a charity event at the former prison in San Francisco Bay.
Starting from 2001, both Vanguard and A&M would re-release all of her older albums with digitally restored sound and bonus content. She would perform at various events including the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, while also releasing several live albums. One of her last performances was played at the 50th Newport Folk Festival in 2009 which marked the 50th anniversary after her initial breakthrough at the event.
For her personal life, Joan was married to David Harris from 1968-73, with whom she has a son. She also had relationships with Bob Dylan and Steve Jobs. Her family converted to Quakerism early in Joan’s life. It is known that Joan’s father is responsible for co-inventing the x-ray microscope.
Grammy Hall of Fame, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Independent Music Award for Best Song - Cover, Diamonds & Rust, Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Forever Young
Nominations
Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, NME Award for World Female Singer, Diamonds & Rust, Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Forever Young
Movies
Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, Fierce Light, Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, Renaldo and Clara, The Memory of Justice, Paperback Dreams, 65 Revisited, Three Worlds, Three Voices, One Vision
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Quote
1
The era in which I came on the scene was a ten-year period of exceptional talent. I mean, nobody could top Dylan; they've been trying for years. Nobody can really top John Lennon. So what what we're looking for - what people in general are looking for and longing for - are the universal songs that bring us together, and that are of really high quality. But those are hard to find. I know that the Occupy movement was looking for the right songs and they ended up singing 'We Shall Overcome' and 'Blowin' in the Wind' because the songs that the group was looking for didn't exist.
2
I think I wrote one spectacular song ['Diamonds and Rust'] and a bunch of A-minuses or B-s, and that's it. I think that's just how it is and that's fine.
3
The fact is I can't sing most of these early folk ballads any more, because I've lost that high register. When I do sing them I have to take them down a few semitones. I'm much more comfortable singing songs by Steve Earle or Natalie Merchant or Ryan Adams, where I'm in a different zone. My voice is much lower these days, and I prefer it. There's also a lot less vibrato, because the ends of the vocal cords start to calcify. You do hear some people my age who shouldn't still be singing, where the vibrato is very wide and out of control and not very attractive. I try to avoid that!
4
On truth: Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.
5
[interview in Time magazine, 11/23/62] Anything called a hootenanny ought to be shot on sight, but the whole country is having one. A hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz, and all over the U.S. there is a great reverberate twang. Guitars and banjos akimbo, folk singers inhabit smoky metropolitan crawl space; they sprawl on the floors of college rooms; near the foot of ski trails, they keep time to the wheeze and sputter of burning logs; they sing homely lyrics to the combers of the Pacific. They are everybody and anybody. A civil engineer performs in his off-hours in the folk bins of the Midwest. So do débutantes, university students, even a refugee from an Eastern girl's-school choir. Everywhere, there are bearded pop singers and clean-cut dilettantes. There are gifted amateurs and serious musicians. New York, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver and San Francisco all have shoals of tiny coffee shops, all loud with basic folk sound--a pinched and studied wail that is intended to suggest flinty hills or clumpy prairies.
6
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
7
You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
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Fact
1
Lives with her ninety year old mother in a home Woodside, California. [March 2004]
2
Her father, Albert V. Baez, died 20 March 2007 at a nursing home in San Mateo County, California, USA. [March 2007]
3
Travels by bus on a musical tour of the United States. [March 2004]
Hunter S. Thompson once corresponded with her. His nickname for her was "Joanie".
9
Resides in Woodside, California.
10
Played a significant role in the Live Aid (1985) concert opening the US segment of the show in Philadelphia (13 July 1985).
11
Longtime companion of Bob Dylan from 1962 to 1965.
12
Strong supporter of the Civil Rights and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. During Christmas of 1972, she joined a peace delegation traveling to North Vietnam.
13
From the age of eighteen into her forties, she sought therapy to handle her intense stage fright.
14
Her son makes musical instruments.
15
Built a treehouse in a tall oak tree behind her home.
16
Ranked #27 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock N Roll
17
Mother, Joan Bridge, was born in Edinburgh, UK and is of English-Scottish descent.
18
Father, Albert Vinicio Baez, is from Puebla, Mexico.
19
Unsuccessfully sued cartoonist Al Capp for libel after parodying her as "Joanie Phoanie" in his comic strip "Li'l Abner" in 1966.
Video Game performer: "Here's To You", "Diamonds & Rust"
Päin seinää
2014
lyrics: "Marcia di Sacco e Vanzetti"
Orange Is the New Black
2014
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
2014
Video Game performer: "Here's To You"
A Case of You
2013
performer: "Diamonds and Rust" - uncredited / writer: "Diamonds and Rust" - uncredited
Late Show with David Letterman
2011
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Independent Lens
2011
TV Series documentary performer - 2 episodes
Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
2010
Documentary performer: "There But for Fortune"
Memòries de la tele
2010
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
2009
Documentary performer: "Tears of Rage"
Taking Woodstock
2009
performer: "Sweet Sir Galahad" / writer: "Sweet Sir Galahad"
True Blood
2008
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
2008
Video Game writer: "Here's To You"
Weeds
2007
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Slacker Uprising
2007
Documentary performer: "Finlandia"
Vogliamo anche le rose
2007
Documentary writer: "Here's to You"
La tele de tu vida
TV Series performer - 1 episode, 2007 writer - 1 episode, 2007
Today's Country Music
2006
Video performer: "If I Were a Carpenter"
American Masters
TV Series documentary arranger - 1 episode, 2005 performer - 1 episode, 2005
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2004
performer: "Here's to You" / writer: "Here's to You"
Eulogy
2004
lyrics: "Diamonds and Rust" / music: "Diamonds and Rust" / performer: "Diamonds and Rust"
Six Feet Under
2003
TV Series 1 episode
Cuéntame
2001
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Le fate ignoranti
2001
arranger: "Gracias A La Vida Here's To Life" / performer: "Gracias A La Vida Here's To Life"
The Sopranos
TV Series performer - 1 episode, 2000 writer - 1 episode, 2000
4 Little Girls
1997
Documentary "Birmingham Sunday"
Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival
1997
Documentary performer: "Let It Be"
Mi vida loca
1993
writer: "Crooked Is the Path" - as J. Baez
Dogfight
1991
performer: "SILVER DAGGER" traditional
Woodstock: The Lost Performances
1990
Video documentary performer: "We Shall Overcome"
The Wonder Years
1988-1990
TV Series performer - 2 episodes
Berkeley in the Sixties
1990
Documentary arranger: "All My Trials" / performer: "All My Trials", "We Shall Overcome"
To Kill a Priest
1988
performer: "The Many Crimes of Cain"
Fame
1985
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Merton
1984
writer: "Blessed Are..."
Amorevolmente
1980
performer: "LOVE IS JUST A FOUR-LETTER WORD"
WKRP in Cincinnati
1980
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Last Ring
1979
performer: "A HARD RAIN'S GONNA FALL"
Fighting for Our Lives
1975
Documentary performer: "Deportee", "Pastures of Plenty"
Sing Sing Thanksgiving
1974
Documentary performer: "I Shall Be Released", "Viva mi Patria Boliva", "Prison Trilogy", "Sing Sing Ossining" / writer: "Prison Trilogy", "Sing Sing Ossining"
Silent Running
1972
performer: "Silent Running", "Rejoice in the Sun"
Joe Hill
1971
performer: "Joe Hill"
A World Apart
1971
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Celebration at Big Sur
1971
Documentary performer: "I Shall Be Released", "A Song For David", "Sweet Sir Galahad" / writer: "A Song For David", "Sweet Sir Galahad"
Sacco & Vanzetti
1971
performer: "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti", "Here's to You", "II Parte La Ballata Di Sacco E Vanzetti", "III Parte La Ballata Di Sacco E Vanzetti " / writer: "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti", "Here's to You"
Rebel
1970
performer: "Carry It On"
Carry It On
1970
Documentary performer: "Oh, Happy Day", "Carry It On', "In Forty Days", "Hickory Wind", "The Last Thing On My Mind", "Joe Hill", "I Shall Be Released", "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man", "Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word", "Suzanne", "We Shall Overcome"