Joni Mitchell’s favourite jazz musicians
Joni Mitchell is most commonly labelled as a folk musician, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. While it’s true that Mitchell was a vital and pioneering force in 1960s and ‘70s folk, inspiring her peers like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. But as her career raced on, her scope of influence expanded well beyond where she started from as jazz became her new love.
It makes sense that Mitchell would become enamoured with jazz. What makes her early folk music so interesting is her complete disregard for form or chords. Her guitar playing makes use of unique open tunings and finger-picking styles, leading her songs with feeling rather than structure. Even when she first broke out, she never wrote, typed, or used easy folk tracks, so her admiration for jazz, with its history of rule-breaking and freestyling, seems to capture her spirit as an artist.
It was her 1974 album Court And Spark that first saw her experimenting with jazz with a cover of ‘Twisted’, a standard by Annie Ross. From then on, her records veered further and further into the jazz world as her song structures loosened and her band expanded.
Of the change up, she told Rolling Stone, “You have two options. You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They’re going to crucify you for staying the same. If you change, they’re going to crucify you for changing. But staying the same is boring. And change is interesting. So, of the two options, I’d rather be crucified for changing.”
That change was also spurred by the inspiration she was getting from her favourite jazz artists. One of the most important influences was Charles Mingus, the legendary bassist with whom Mitchell had sparked up a friendship. The pair collaborated on a series of tracks, which were released after his death as the 1979 album, Mingus.
“This was a unique position,” Mitchell said of the experience, “I’ve never worked for somebody else before. Although in the treatment of the music, it was much more my version [of] jazz.”
Another important jazz figure in her life was Miles Davis. She said of the artist, “He captures and transmits – without words – all we need to know about the situation- in the universal language of tone.” The ability to use music to tell his story and cast off tradition to find out what would tell it best was something that greatly inspired Mitchell.
In terms of vocalists, Mitchell loved jazz singers, too. Namely, she loved Billie Holiday. Just as she’s celebrated for her tenderly emotional folk tracks, she loved Holiday’s devastating jazz odes like ‘Solitude’. “No one I know could express hurt and loss with such a good-hearted tone – not a trace of self-pity or melodrama in it. This was her great gift,” she said of the singer.
Duke Ellington also stands out as a firm favourite, as she described the musician as “inimitable”. In a playlist of her favourite songs of all time, she included his track ‘A Subtle Lament’.
Of her own jazz works, Mitchell explained, “I was taking it someplace where I would be true to myself.” To her, jazz allowed her to express herself more freely, without confines or expectations. It allowed her to continue adventuring and advancing in music, giving her a whole new language before folk or classic lyricism, and these favourite artists provided the spark of inspiration.
