Pearl & Joel Bailes · 2018 Honorees

By day Pearl Bailes is the longtime fourth grade teacher at Capitol Hill Day School and Joel Bailes is a technician at the Library of Congress. By night, by weekend, and by warm holiday afternoon they are – together – the Capitol Hillbillies, Joel singing and banging out tunes on Rollo, the Rolling Piano, while Pearl alternately sings and plays the harmonica. Their music is joyous, eclectic, and offered free to passersby.

Pearl, who grew up in Memphis, and Joel, from Wheaton, Maryland, both attended the appropriately named New College in Sarasota, Florida, now part of the Florida state system but then a proudly experimental and very small school. There were few Jewish students so, early in their freshman year, the High Holy Days brought them together. Pearl loved the school
and majored in English literature. Joel too enjoyed his studies but felt bored and cramped by the social scene, longing for something “more lively and artistic.” Senior year they got engaged and, instead of the traditional ring, Joel gave Pearl a banjo. 

After stints living and playing music in Ireland, farming with another couple in Virginia (they raised chickens and goats and canned 200 quarts of tomatoes a year), and obtaining a couple of graduate degrees (hers in early childhood education, his in Hebrew language and literature), Pearl and Joel settled on Capitol Hill. Right from the start, they loved everything about the neighborhood from the relaxed atmosphere to the babysitting co-op (by then they had two children, Elana and Brendan) to the vitality of community life. Joel found neighbors to study Torah with on Saturday mornings and a job at the Library of Congress. Pearl was offered a teaching position at Capitol Hill Day School, which she accepted even though it was for fourth grade and she wanted to get back to what she thought of as her real love, which was kindergarten. But it turned out that fourth grade was a good fit. Pearl found great rapport with fourth graders and has been there for twenty-nine years.

And, always, there has been music in their lives. A dozen years ago, Pearl and Joel started going each summer to Augusta Music Camp in Elkins, West Virginia. There they listen to and play various genres of music from blues and swing to country to Cajun. Their son, Brendan, has attended with them and is a drummer and guitarist. And it was there that Pearl was introduced to and fell in love with what she calls “the vast world of the harmonica.” Joel dreams of creating in D.C. a culture of street music like that of New Orleans. If that ever happens, it will surely be, at least in part, thanks to Pearl and Joel Bailes.