Mitchell, Joni

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Joni Mitchell

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist

“By taking risks, [Joni] Mitchell has survived into D the late 1980s with her art still blazing,” declared Nicholas Jennings in Maclean’s magazine. Mitchell, who started out as a folksinger in the 1960s, is respected as an innovative contributor to various musical genres. In addition to folk, she has made successful forays into rock, country, and jazz. Though perhaps best known for her folk compositions “Both Sides, Now” and “The Circle Game,” Mitchell also had hits with “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Help Me,” “Raised on Robbery,” and “Turn Me On (I’m a Radio).” Most of her albums have become gold records, and she won a Grammy Award for the best folk performance in 1970 for her album Clouds. Mitchell is also a talented painter; she adorns her album covers with her own brushwork, and in 1988 exhibited her paintings in Tokyo, Japan.

Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson in 1943 in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada. The only child of a grocery store manager and a former schoolteacher, Mitchell grew up listening to her mother quote the works of poet and playwright William Shakespeare. She was also encouraged early in her musical abilities; after the family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, her father bought her a secondhand piano. Mitchell told Michael Small in People that the piano lessons lasted a few years, but “they conflicted with listening to Wild Bill Hickock on the radio, so I quit.” Instead, she taught herself how to play guitar with a Pete Seeger instruction book. Receiving her primary and secondary education in the time before art and music were a part of the curriculum, Mitchell found little to interest her academically, and thus was a mediocre student. She centered her efforts in school, however, on extracurricular activities. Mitchell explained to Small: “I was always the school artist…. I did the backdrops for plays, [and] illustrated the yearbook and the school newspaper.”

After graduating from high school, Mitchell enrolled in the Alberta College of Art in Calgary with the aim of studying commercial art. Bored with her classes, she began to concentrate more on her musical talent, and after about a year, left to try her luck as a folksinger in Toronto, Ontario. When Mitchell arrived there, she did not have a musician’s union card, so she worked in a department store to earn the union dues. Eventually, however, Mitchell became well known in Toronto’s folk circles, playing at clubs like the Riverboat. At this time she met Chuck Mitchell, a folk singer from Detroit, Michigan. They married shortly after they met—one account claims it was only thirty-six hours—and moved to Detroit. Though Mitchell took her stage name from a derivative of her middle name and her husband’s surname, the marriage did not last long, and after about a year she left him and moved to New York City.

For the Record…

Name originally Roberta Joan Anderson; born November 1N 7, 1943, in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada; daughter of William A. (a grocery store manager) and Myrtle M. (a teacher; maiden name, McKee) Anderson; married Chuck Mitchell (a singer, songwriter, and musician), June, 1965 (divorced c. 1966); married Larry Klein (a bass player), 1982. Education: Attended Alberta College of Art.

Worked in a department store in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, c. 1963; singer in folk clubs in Toronto, c. 1964-65, in Detroit, Mich., c. 1965-66, and in New York City, 1967-69; recording artist and concert performer, 1968—; began musical collaboration with backup group L.A. Express, 1974.

Awards: Grammy Award for best folk performance, 1970, for album, Clouds.

Addresses: Residence —Los Angeles, Calif.; and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Manager —Elliot Roberts, Lookout Management, 9120 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90069. Other— c/o 624 Funchal Rd., Los Angeles, CA 90024.

Mitchell struggled for about a year and a half in a New York folk scene clogged with acts until she was discovered by Reprise records. In 1968, she put out Joni Mitchell, her first album, later retitled Song to a Seagull. The work garnered mixed reviews, but Mitchell’s next album, Clouds, released in 1969, featured her unique chording style and the song “Both Sides, Now.” Though the single was a much bigger hit for fellow folk songstress Judy Collins, who released a cover version, it won Mitchell a reputation as a songwriter, and the album it came from won Mitchell a Grammy.

Tiring of city life, Mitchell moved to California and settled in Laurel Canyon, near Los Angeles. There she was inspired to write the material for her third album, 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, which included “Big Yellow Taxi.” Canyon also included “Woodstock,” celebrating the 1969 rock music festival of the same name, and was well-received by music critics. Hailed for her major effort in Canyon, Mitchell was lauded by Don Heckman in the New York Times: “Her crystal clear imagery is as shining bright as ever, and her melodies, if anything, seem to be improving.”

After Mitchell followed up Canyon with 1971 ’s Blue, she moved to Asylum records to record For the Roses, which featured “Turn Me On (I’m a Radio).” The song has a country sound, and Mitchell continued her branching into different musical fields on 1974’s Court and Spark. On Spark, Mitchell recorded a version of the jazz classic made famous by singer Annie Ross, “Twisted,” and the rock-influenced “Raised on Robbery.” Also, that album marked the first project on which she used her longtime jazz backup group, the L.A. Express. She continued her jazz experimentation with 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns, which, though rated the worst album of the year by Rolling Stone magazine, according to Small, became a gold record and has been reassessed in the light of praise from others in the musical field. In 1979, Mitchell released Mingus, a collaboration with jazz artist Charles Mingus that she worked on with him just before he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Featuring lyrics Mitchell wrote to Mingus’s music, the album was not a critical or popular success. As Mitchell told Small: “It cost me plenty. It put me in a no-man’s land where radio stations couldn’t pin me down. But,” she asserted, “if I had to do it over again, I would.”

During the earlier years of her career, Mitchell had been the subject of much press gossip concerning her affairs with fellow musicians, including Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Graham Nash and David Crosby of the group Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The press “portrayed me as this heartbreaker,” Mitchell revealed to Small. She put an end to this kind of speculation, however, in 1982, when she married her second husband, bass player Larry Klein. Klein has played for Mitchell on some of her albums, including Dog Eat Dog. Released on Geffen records in 1985, Dog Eat Dog was yet another turning point for Mitchell. Widely considered her most political album, it is rock-oriented and features protest songs which “rail against greed, TV evangelism and the far right,” according to Nicholas Jennings in Maclean’s. Jennings, however, preferred Mitchell’s 1988 Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, which he labeled “her best album in years…. Although Mitchell’s anger [displayed in Dog Eat Dog] is muted on Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, her resolve remains strong.”

Selected discography

LPs

Joni Mitchell (includes “I Had a King,” “Michael From the Mountains,” “Nathan La Freneer,” and “Cactus Tree”), later retitled Song to a Seagull, Reprise, 1968.

Clouds (includes “Both Sides, Now,” “Chelsea Morning,” and “The Fiddle and the Drum”), Reprise, 1969.

Ladies of the Canyon (includes “Big Yellow Taxi,” “The Circle Game,” and “Woodstock”), Reprise, 1970.

Blue (includes “The Last Time I Saw Richard” and “A Case of You”), Reprise, 1971.

For the Roses (includes “Turn Me On (I’m a Radio),” “Woman of Heart and Fire,” “See You Sometime,” and “Lesson in Survival”), Asylum, 1972.

Court and Spark (includes “Twisted,” “Help Me,” “Raised on Robbery,” “The Same Situation,” “Car on a Hill,” and “Free Man in Paris”), Asylum, 1974.

Miles of Aisles (live; includes “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” “Carey,” and “Big Yellow Taxi”), Asylum, 1975.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns (includes “Harry’s House” and “The Jungle Line”), Asylum, 1975.

Hejira, Asylum, 1976.

Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Asylum, 1977.

Mingus, Asylum, 1979.

Shadows and Light (live), Asylum, 1980.

Dog Eat Dog, Geffen, 1985.

Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm (includes “My Secret Place,” “Dancin’ Clown,” “Snakes and Ladders,” “Cool Water,” “Number One,” and “Lakota”), Geffen, 1988.