Joan Bridge Baez

JOAN Bridge Baez, who has died just after her 100th birthday, was the daughter of a Scottish minister who, along with her Mexican-born husband, instilled in her daughters the need to fight for justice and equality regardless of race or religion. Her middle daughter, Joan Baez, with whom she is pictured, became the most famous member of the family, a folk singer with crystalline tones. The other two daughters, Pauline and Mimi, were less famous but played a major role not only in the world of music but in the pushing their parents' ideal of pacifism. Because of her daughter's fame, Joan Bridge Baez became known in the family as "Big Joan" as opposed to her daughter, "wee Joan".

Joan Chandos Bridge was born in Edinburgh. Her father was minister at St. John's Episcopal Church at the western extremity of Princes Street in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, where she was baptized. She was descended from the famous English Dukes of Chandos. When she was a child, the family emigrated first to Canada and then the US, where she met Albert Baez from Puebla, Mexico, the son of a Methodist minister, at a high school dance in Madison, New Jersey. They married in 1936 and became Quakers, moving around the world, including to England, France, Switzerland, Spain and Baghdad, where Albert, later known to his students as "Professor Al" or amicably as "Popsy," worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) as a professor of physics.

The family later relocated to California, by which time the three daughters were not only multi-lingual but sensitive to many cultures and religions. Joan, the future star, was born in Staten Island, New York, in 1941.

Albert Baez was a leading physicist, helping develop the X-Ray reflection microscope for examination of living cells. He and his wife Joan also loved classical music, opera, indeed all the arts, and their daughters grew up in that environment.

Albert and Scots-born Joan, as Quakers, also remained pacifists, something which influenced their daughters and, in turn, their daughters' friends including a young singer calling himself Bob Dylan, real name Robert Zimmerman from Minnesota. After meeting the younger Joan, Dylan would go on to write some of his most famous songs, including With God on Our Side.

Joan Sr never forgot her roots, both Scottish and English, something she passed on musically to her daughters, including songs like The Braes o' Balquhither, which would later become better known as Wild Mountain Thyme, or Will ye Go, Lassie, Go, recorded by Joan Baez as well as many other artists.

Joan Sr and her husband Albert had three daughters – Pauline, perhaps best-known in the music business by her first married name Pauline Marden (now Pauline Bryan), Joan and Mimi. Pauline co-wrote one of the first great folk-rock songs, Pack up Your Sorrows, along with singer Richard Fariña, who recorded it with his wife Mimi Baez Fariña, who was Joan and Pauline's younger sister. Richard Fariña died in a motorcycle accident in 1966. Mimi died of cancer in 2001, which led to a time of extreme distress for the two Joans, her mother and sister.

Although her daughters became better-known, Joan Bridge Baez remained a lifelong anti-war activist, often demonstrating alongside them and Martin Luther King Jr, during the American civil rights campaign of the 1960s.

On a visit to Scotland last year during a UK tour in which she sang at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall, Joan Baez said in an interview: "My mom left Scotland when she was an infant. When I arrived in Scotland, I called her to ask about her father, my grandfather, and his being a minister who had preached somewhere in Edinburgh. She said: 'Oh, yes, it's a little church at the bottom of what I think is called Princes Street.' So I went from the top of Princes Street and walked down," the singer went on. "When I hit the bottom, there was this giant cathedral. I called home again and my mother said: 'Oh, yes, that's where Daddy preached.' It turned out it was the early 19th Century St John's Episcopal Church with its Gothic towers and spires."

Joan the singer also recalled her mother having supernatural experiences during their visits to a Scottish castle. "Maybe that's a Scots thing," Joan said. "In the morning, my mom asked me if I'd been all right during the night. When I said I was fine, she asked why I had been knocking on the wall. I wasn't knocking but my mother tends to get more visitations than most people."

Shortly before she died, Joan Bridge Baez wrote the following: "When I join the Heavenly band ... friends who want to celebrate my new adventure, please gather round.

"Don't grieve, for it's only a worn-out body that's leaving and the memory of any sad times goes with it. The good memories are in my spirit and my spirit is with you today. I'm in your midst, for there's nothing more valuable to me than to be with you, my beloved family and my gracious friends. Take a moment for silence and wish me well. I'll hear you. Then make the bottles pop. You know I love champagne almost as much as I love you! Big Joan."

Joan Bridge Baez's husband Albert died in 2007. Her youngest daughter Mimi died in 2001.

She is survived by her daughters Joan and Pauline, two grandsons including Gabe who now plays drums on tour as back-up to his mother, one granddaughter and one great granddaughter, Jasmine.