Last week I began to read the book, Joni Mitchell, The Anthology, authored and curated by writer Barney Hoskyns. It's a collection of reviews, conversations and interviews covering all of Joni Mitchell 40+ year musical career. It's a fine way to cover her career, since over time her musical journey took many turns and it helps to hear the views of writers reacting to all of it and also get Joni's own insights through wide ranging interviews and conversations at different times. I burned through the book in just a few days, tugged by the many memories I have of her music, both as she has performed it and through the many other artists who have interpreted her songs. My own Joni Mitchell journey began in the summer of 1974. I was on an internship in Wisconsin and one of the other interns played the music of For the Roses for me. I was immediately hooked and dove in deep when I heard her next album, Help Me, just after that. From that point on, Joni was one of my musical north stars. She didn't know it, but we traveled on parallel musical journeys. As she began to delve into jazz, I started shifting my own music in that direction, getting instruction at a local music studio on jazz guitar and getting direct exposure over the next few years to musicians such as Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays as they were just breaking out.
In a similar manner, Mitchell's music expanded beyond the solo focused early efforts -- which culminated with the remarkable Blue album and began to be supplemented with other musicians. But as several writers in the anthology note, Mitchell's music was quite unique and didn't fit the normal rock and roll or folk modes as it evolved. So she started working with jazz musicians -- first the LA Express, led by the lyrical woodwinds player Tom Scott and then ascending up the jazz ladder to work with some of the most inspiring musicians of that time, bassist Jaco Pastorius and later, saxophonist Wayne Shorter. I saw her play live with the LA Express in August 1974. That show included a mix of her solo oriented material, mostly dating from Blue or earlier albums, and the songs from the Help Me and For the Roses, which were a good fit for the LA Express. The crowd seemed most enamored with her older material and in fact, hearing Joni play with musicians like guitarist Robbin Ford was a dramatic departure from solo renditions backed by her own piano, acoustic guitar or dulcimer. I was intrigued by all of it. I soon bought Blue and found she was already quite a mature songwriter by this point, which had been quite obvious at the show.
A few years later, she produced one of my favorite albums, Hejira, which was the first to include Jaco Pastorius as a collaborator. I was already familiar with Jaco from Weather Report, but Mitchell's music showed that he could use his fretless electric bass to add extraordinary color to her compositions. A couple years later, Joni embarked on her most experimental album, when the ailing bassist Charles Mingus invited her to augment some music he had written. This most unlikely of partnerships resulted in the Mingus album, though Charles died of complications from ALS as she was putting it together. In the book, pianist Ben Sidran discusses the project with her and we also get a review from writer Sandy Robinson. Like most reviewers, he felt the album was flawed and was too big a leap for Mitchell to take on successfully. In my own view, the album had its moments, but didn't really work as a whole. But there was one extra bonus on the back end.
Mitchell took the music on the road and was backed by a who's who of contemporary jazz musicians, including Jaco, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays and Michael Brecker. I saw this band play live in 1979 at Forest Hills in New York City and it felt like a dream to see so many of my favorite musicians on stage together. It didn't always work, but it was remarkable what these musicians were able to add to Joni's music and yet it still felt like Joni was the artistic director. A good example of this band was captured on the Shadows and Light album. As the reviewer Ian Penman notes, Jaco played very well. For example, I just pulled out my vinyl album and listened to The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines. On this song, Jaco shows he can play straight ahead jazz that totally kicks butt and he and Michael Brecker soar into the stratosphere along with drummer Don Alias during the highly collaborative solo part. It is such a joy to hear how well they played together and it's poignant to think how much the jazz world lost when Jaco's life spun out of control and he died young. My own band has been working on playing Free Man in Paris, so it's a lot of fun to hear what this hot band did when they applied their chops to one of my favorite Mitchell anthems.
One of the delights of Hoskyns' book is that it compelled me to pull out my Mitchell albums -- both vinyl and on CD -- and go back and listen again. This is a journey I'd encourage any fan of Mitchell's music to take. I didn't like everything she has released, but so much of it stands the test of time and shows just how much an artist can grow even over the course of a long career. I don't know if we'll hear any more Joni Mitchell new music again, but the music she has already produced is among the very best of her generation.