Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, CBE (/ˈɑːrməˌtreɪdɪŋ/, born 9 December 1950[1]) is a Kittitian-English singer-songwriter and guitarist.[2]
Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading
9 December 1950
Basseterre, Saint Christopher and Nevis, British Leeward Islands
Birmingham, England
Singer-songwriter
- Vocals
- guitar
- keyboards
- bass guitar
1972–present
A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.
In a recording career spanning nearly 50 years, Armatrading has released 20 studio albums, as well as several live albums and compilations.
Early life[edit]
Joan Armatrading, the third of six children, was born in 1950 in the town of Basseterre in what was then the British colony Saint Christopher and Nevis.[3][4] Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife.[5] When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham in England, sending Joan to live with her grandmother on the Caribbean island of Antigua.[6] In early 1958, at the age of seven, she joined her parents in Brookfields,[7][8][9] then a district of Birmingham.[10] (The area, now mostly demolished, has been absorbed into the district of Hockley.)[11] Her father had played in a band in his youth, later forbidding his children from touching his guitar.[8] At about the age of 14 Armatrading began writing songs by setting her own limericks to music on a piano that her mother had purchased as "a piece of furniture".[3][9][12] Armatrading then began teaching herself guitar after her mother had bought her one that was worth £3 (equivalent to £62 in 2021)[13] from a pawn shop in exchange for two prams.[3][8]
Armatrading left school at the age of 15 to help support her family.[3][4] She lost her first job (as a typist and comptometer operator) after taking her guitar to work and playing it during tea-breaks.[14]
Guitars[edit]
Armatrading performs on both six- and twelve-string acoustic and electric guitars.[55] She has played on Ovation acoustic instruments since 1973, and said this about them in an interview with the magazine Guitar Player: "I'm a bit of a hitter, you see – I bash – and I like to have everything going at once: bass, harmony, and melody. This is why I love Ovations. They are very powerful-sounding guitars, and when I hit those strings, they ring with a nice, clear, percussive – but not overly bright – sound that highlights the rhythms I like to play."[55][56] She has played Fender Stratocaster and Gibson electric guitars.[55] For her 2012–13 tour, she performed on six- and 12-string Ovations, Stratocasters, and customised Tom Anderson guitars, while for her 2014–2015 Me Myself I Tour, she performed on Ovation and Variax instruments.[34][57]
Collaborations[edit]
Armatrading performed as a cameo vocalist for the song "Don't Lose Your Head" on the 1986 Queen album A Kind of Magic.
In 1997, she made an appearance on the charity single "Perfect Day".
Armatrading's song "In These Times" from her 2003 album Lovers Speak appeared on the compilation album Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace which was released in 2008[70] by The Art of Peace Foundation.[71]
