Joni Mitchell reveals her favourite Miles Davis song
Joni Mitchell has been known as one of the mothers of songcrafting for decades. Although a handful of artists like to talk about the music seemingly like a gift more often than not, Mitchell has an acute knowledge of what she’s doing whenever she sits down to write a song, painting vivid pictures of what her characters are doing in songs like ‘Woodstock’ or ‘My Old Man’. Rather than the conventional rock and roll structure, Mitchell has also been a fan of the jazz world.
Before Mitchell had started to perform wild genre experiments, though, she had a reputation as one of the premiere folk singers of her time. When working on songs like ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, Mitchell was stringing together simple melodies that had the habit of ripping the listener’s heart out of their chest every time they listened.
For those keen-eared listeners, though, Mitchell’s approach to the instrument was not necessarily standard. When playing her signature tunes, Mitchell would employ various open tunings that had never been heard before in popular music. Rather than rely on traditional chords, the ringing sounds of Mitchell’s guitar gave her an added boost when working on songs like ‘Amelia’ later on, bringing an airy sound to everything she played.
By the time she got around to working on albums like Hejira, Mitchell had become ensconced in jazz. When talking about her favourite records, Mitchell had incredibly high praise for the work of Miles Davis. Then again, Davis has always been able to toe the line between traditional jazz and what the sounds of popular music were doing.
Throughout the initial rock and roll revolution, Davis was expanding his craft in terms of what jazz could do. Rather than have a singer out front, Davis got all of his listeners paying attention through the smooth tone of his trumpet, making songs that put his audience into a particular state of mind on albums like Sketches of Spain and Bitches Brew.
When talking about her favourite Davis song, Mitchell singled out ‘It Never Entered My Mind’. Although Davis didn’t write the traditional tune, Mitchell talked about how well he inhabits the song, telling Artist’s Choice, “Miles was contemptuous of singers. He said, ‘They’ve got words – I’ve got to do it without the words.’ On this track, Miles sings. He captures and transmits – without words – all we need to know about the situation- in the universal language of tone.”
While most artists might talk about playing the song to the best of their ability, Davis seems to inhabit every note in the few minutes he has when playing with the melody. Like any lead guitar player in the rock genre, Davis is squeezing every note for all it’s worth, looking to capture an emotion with his playing and creating sonic colours that no one would have thought were possible.
Mitchell wasn’t the only one enamoured with Davis’s style. In the late 1960s, Davis had even planned to work alongside Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix in a would-be supergroup, with Hendrix’s vast knowledge of sonic colours having the potential to create musical euphoria with Davis.
Although Mitchell may not claim to play the same kind of music as Davis, her proficiency behind the fretboard is about carrying on the legacy of what Davis stands for. Just like her jazz favourites, Mitchell wants to make music that expands the vocabulary of what the instrument is capable of.
