Canadian singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist Critics and fans lauded Mitchell’s contributions to the folk-rock genre in the 1960’s and 1970’s, responding to her inventive, melodic songs and poetic lyrics. Self-taught but musically sophisticated, Mitchell developed into an increasingly experimental songwriter, expanding her horizons to include jazz and other musical forms.
Born: November 7, 1943; Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada
Roberta Joan Anderson (birth name) Principal recordings albums: Song of the Seagull, 1968; Clouds, 1969; Ladies of the Canyon, 1970; Blue, 1971; For the Roses, 1972; Court and Spark, 1974; The Hissing of Summer Lawns, 1975; Hejira, 1976; Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, 1977; Mingus, 1979; Wild Things Run Fast, 1982; Dog Eat Dog, 1985; Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, 1988; Night Ride Home, 1991; Turbulent Indigo, 1994; Taming the Tiger, 1998; Both Sides Now, 2000; Travelogue, 2002; Shine, 2007. The Life The daughter of a teacher and a former Canadian airman who became a grocer after World War II, Joni (JOH-nee) Mitchell was raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
She first became interested in singing during her hospitalization for polio at the age of nine, and she briefly took piano lessons as a child. She taught herself ukulele and guitar, and she was inspired by a teacher to develop her talent for poetry. Nevertheless, she saw herself as primarily a visual artist.
In 1964 she enrolled in the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. However, Mitchell had already begun playing clubs and festivals around Canada, and a year later, she moved to Toronto to work as a folksinger. That same year, she gave birth to a daughter by an ex-boyfriend. Soon after, she married folksinger Chuck Mitchell, and she began to perform with him as Joni Mitchell. Reluctantly giving up her child for adoption, Mitchell moved with her husband to Detroit, Michigan. After their divorce in 1966, Mitchell moved to New York City, becoming well known in clubs for her poetic songs and her unique guitar style. During this time she became romantically involved with singer-songwriter David Crosby, who in 1967 brought her into the Southern California folk-rock music scene and who produced her first album. Later, she met Crosby’s friend, singer-songwriter Graham Nash, and in 1969 she moved in with him. The 1970’s were the period of Mitchell’s greatest professional success; her songs were covered by established singers and she enjoyed a string of hit records, awards, and critical praise.
She also toured and traveled extensively. Always determined to follow her interests, Mitchell began to produce work that was less accessible and more experimental, retreating from the folk-rock world. Mitchell began to divide her time between British Columbia and a new home in Bel Air, California. After living for a time in Bel Air with jazzfusion drummer John Guerin, in 1982 she met and married bassist-sound engineer Larry Klein, who often collaborated on her increasingly avant-garde musical recordings. Klein and Mitchell divorced in 1994. In 1996 Mitchell was happily reunited with her daughter, at which time her identity as a mother and as a grandmother to her daughter’s two young children became an important part of her life. Having created much of the artwork for her albums, Mitchell began at that time to concentrate on her first love, painting. She returned to writing and recording in 2007.
The Music Mitchell’s songs are melodious, poetic, and personal, and her vocal range at one time could extend beyond three octaves. Her guitar style is innovative and intuitive, characterized by open or alternative tunings and complex harmonies. Clouds. Mitchell was originally a folksinger, but her second album, Clouds, secured her reputation as a major talent on the burgeoning folk-rock scene, gaining her wide recognition and a Grammy Award in 1969. This album, featuring her distinctive acoustic guitar and lilting vocals, contained her hit songs “Chelsea Morning”¯ and “Both Sides Now,”¯ the latter song one that has been most covered by other artists and has become a popular standard. Ladies of the Canyon. Ladies of the Canyon introduced two more of Mitchell’s most well-known works: the environmental protest song “Big Yellow Taxi”¯ and “Woodstock,”¯ about the legendary music festival. “Woodstock”¯ became an anthem for the 1960’s era. Self-taught as a musician, Mitchell created songs that fit perfectly into the needs of her generation for voices and visions from outside the musical establishment. She became one of the major musical voices to speak to and to speak for the generation that came of age in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In subsequent decades Mitchell continued to be a freethinking outsider, going her own way musically, even at the expense of commercial success.
Blue. Mitchell’s fourth album, Blue, represented a break with her earlier work associated with the folk-rock movement. Composed while Mitchell was fleeing the pressures of stardom through travel in Europe, this poetic suite of songs featured darker emotional colors, with lyrical confessions of deep sorrow and regret. With vocals that were more nuanced and complex than in her earlierwork, this cycle of songs has been praised for its haunting melodies and the extraordinary intimacy of its introspective, confessional lyrics. The songs on Blue had simple accompaniments on piano, guitar, and Appalachian dulcimer, but they also introduced a percussive guitar style and rock-oriented piano rhythms that suggested a move away from Mitchell’s folk origins. Two torchy songs from that album, “A Case of You”¯ and “River,”¯ have become much-recorded popular standards. This album is considered the best work of Mitchell’s early period, and it is considered among the great popular albums of all time. In 1999 Blue was given a Grammy Hall of Fame award, for recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and that have proved their artistic merit or historical significance. It was also listed by Time in 2006 as among the All-Time 100 Albums of the last half-century, and in 2003 it was on Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest albums of all time. Court and Spark. Her most commercially successful collection of songs, this album was a breakthrough in terms of expanding Mitchell’s musical horizons. With its quirky and adventurous melody, the ambivalent love song, “Help Me,”¯ one of her best-selling singles, pointed the way to Mitchell’s free, jazz-inflected and experimental work. Court and Spark was, significantly, backed by the jazzfusion band L.A. Express;
Mitchell went on to include in her subsequent recordings other wellknown jazz musicians, such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tom Scott, Jaco Pastorius, and Charles Mingus, withwhomshe collaborated on an entire album. During this period, her melodies and instrumental settings became more complex and unusual, and while praised as revolutionary by her admirers, her work after the best-selling Court and Spark became increasingly less accessible to a popular audience. Turbulent Indigo. Mitchell’s recordings during the 1980’s continued her explorations of jazz, with the addition of electronic synthesizers. Her 1994 album Turbulent Indigo, however, returned to some extent to her simple and direct folk-rock roots. One of her most critically acclaimed recordings, this album also definitely marked a change in Mitchell’s voice, which, while losing much of its airy upper register, became deeper, huskier, and more expressive in its lower range.
Her subject matter was also dark and serious, with commentary on the damage done to contemporary society by violence, greed, global warming, and consumerism, troubling themes interestingly counterpointed by attractive melody lines. Considered something of a comeback album, Turbulent IndigowontwoGrammyAwards, including Best Pop Album in 1995. Shine. In albums such as Turbulent Indigo and her later album Shine, Mitchell continued to explore a contrapuntal dynamic between pleasing music and lyrics that often concentrated on disillusionment and disappointment, especially with regard to social and political issues. It made perfect sense, in this context, for Mitchell to record a new version of her early environmentalist song, “Big Yellow Taxi,”¯ for her album Shine. Although her laterwork included more protest lyrics, there is also an element in Mitchell’s mature music of what she called romantic classicism, acting as a counterweight to her hard-edged social commentary.
In addition, Mitchell’s writing has always contained both humor and hope, which are still in evidence in her later music. Musical Legacy Mitchell exerted a powerful influence on those musicians who have responded not only to her more accessible early work but also to her later experimental song cycles. Mitchell is credited especially with blazing a trail for women songwriters such as Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Bj?rk, and Sheryl Crow. Her unique musicianship and her poetic song lyrics made a deep impression on male musicians such as Elvis Costello, Prince, Morrissey, Seal, Beck, and Led Zeppelin. Not only has her music inspired other songwriters, she has been the subject of the lyrics of other songwriters, confirming her iconic status. For artists of either gender, her determination to preserve her artistic integrity has made her a role model. Mitchell’s songs have been covered by numerous artists of her own and succeeding generations; a number of them, such as “Both Sides Now,”¯ “Big Yellow Taxi,”¯ “Woodstock,”¯ “River,”¯ “The Circle Game,”¯ “A Case of You,”¯ and “Chelsea Morning”¯ have become contemporary standards. In 2003 Rolling Stone named Mitchell among the hundred greatest guitarists of all time, the highest-ranking woman on the list. In 2004 Rolling Stone included her in its list of the hundred Greatest Artists of All Time. In 1997 Mitchell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She has received numerous honors, among them five Grammy Awards, and she was given a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. Her native country of Canada has also given her many awards. She has been featured on a Canadian postage stamp, and she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, that country’s highest civilian honor.
