Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, CC (born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta), is a legendary Canadian musician and painter. Initially working in Toronto and western Canada, she was associated with the burgeoning folk music scene of the mid-1960s in New York City. Through the 1970s she expanded her horizons, predominantly to rock music and jazz, to become one of the most highly respected singer-songwriters of the late 20th century. Mitchell is also an accomplished artist; she has, through photography or painting, created the artwork for each of her albums, and she often describes herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance."

Early life

A painter who had also dabbled in piano, guitar and ukulele since childhood, Mitchell took her surname from a brief marriage to folksinger Chuck Mitchell in 1965. She performed frequently in coffee houses and folk clubs and became well known for her unique style of song writing and her innovative guitar style. Personal and often self-consciously "poetic," her songs were strengthened by her extraordinarily wide-ranging voice (with a range in pitch at one time covering over four octaves) and unique guitar playing, tuning the instrument in unorthodox manners to produce a distinctive rhythmic, driving sound. She has been a cigarette smoker since the age of nine, which may explain the unique texture to her voice, which was especially prominent in her later albums.

Related Topics:
Piano - Guitar - Ukulele - 1965 - Folk clubs - Octave

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Much of her initial acclaim was as a result of other artists covering her songs; her first songwriting credit to hit the charts, "Urge for Going", was a success for country singer George Hamilton IV and for folk singer Tom Rush - Mitchell's own 1967 recording of the song was not released until the Hits compilation in 1996. Judy Collins had a top-ten hit in early 1968 with "Both Sides Now", and British folk rock group Fairport Convention included "Chelsea Morning" and "I Don't Know Where I Stand" on their debut album, recorded in late 1967, and the otherwise unreleased "Eastern Rain" on their second album the following year. The songs on her first two solo albums Joni Mitchell (Song to a Seagull) (1968) and Clouds (1969) were archetypes of the nascent singer-songwriter movement of the time.

Related Topics:
George Hamilton IV - Tom Rush - 1967 - 1996 - Judy Collins - 1968 - Folk rock - Fairport Convention - Joni Mitchell (Song to a Seagull) - Clouds

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By her third album, Ladies of the Canyon (1970), maturity brought a record infused with the spirit of California life (the canyon of the title is Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles) as well as containing her first major hit single, the environmental "Big Yellow Taxi" (about paving paradise to put up a parking lot), and her song "Woodstock", about the music festival, which was later a hit for both Crosby, Stills and Nash and Matthews Southern Comfort. (Ironically, Mitchell did not even go to Woodstock, having cancelled her appearance at the festival on the advice of her manager for fear that she would miss a scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show.) "For Free" is the first of Mitchell's many songs that underscore the dichotomy between the benefits of her stardom and its costs, both in terms of its pressure and of the loss of privacy and freedom it entails.

Related Topics:
Ladies of the Canyon - California - Laurel Canyon - Los Angeles - Big Yellow Taxi - Parking lot - Woodstock - Music festival - Crosby, Stills and Nash - Matthews Southern Comfort - The Dick Cavett Show

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