Joan Armatrading

Joan Armatrading
Armatrading performing in Germany, 2007
Background information
Birth name	Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading
Born	(1950-12-09) 9 December 1950 (age 66) Basseterre, Saint Kitts
Genres	Rock, pop, folk rock, blues
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano
Years active	1972—present
Labels	Cube Records, A&M, RCA, Universal, EMI, Savoy Jazz
Website	Joanarmatrading.com
Notable instruments
Ovation Guitars Gibson Les Paul

Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, MBE (/ˈɑːrməˌtreɪdɪŋ/, born 9 December 1950) is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist.

A three-time Grammy Award-nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She also received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.

In a recording career spanning 40 years, Armatrading has released 18 studio albums, as well as several live albums and compilations.

Joan Armatrading was born in 1950 in Basseterre on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts, the third of six children. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a housewife. When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham, England, while Joan was sent to live with her grandmother on the Caribbean island of Antigua. In early 1958 at the age of seven, she joined her parents in Brookfields, then a slum district of Birmingham. The area is now mostly demolished and has been absorbed into the district of Handsworth. Her father had played in a band in his youth, later forbidding his children from touching his guitar. 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". Shortly thereafter, her mother bought her a £3 guitar from a pawn shop in exchange for two prams, and the younger Armatrading began teaching herself the instrument.