The album Joni Mitchell made to impress her jazz heroes: “People were surprised”
Joni Mitchell often gets mistaken for simply being a folk musician, but while this may appear to ring true on the surface, a deeper dive into her catalogue proves that there’s so much more depth to her craft than that.
Yes, her earliest work tends to fall into this bracket, with records like Clouds and Ladies of the Canyon both helping to solidify her status as one of the greatest folk artists of her generation, but by the time she came to releasing her fourth studio album, 1971’s Blue, her artistic palette was sounding a lot more diverse and taking inspiration from a wider range of places.
Only a few years later, she was releasing albums like Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, where there appeared to be a far greater jazz influence present in her compositions. They’d always shown a great deal of complexity in their arrangements, but the chord progressions and freeform structures were beginning to demonstrate that she’d started to distract herself from the folk world in order to get more entrenched in jazz.
You’d have thought that by playing with the likes of Jaco Pastorius on records like Hejira, going all-in on the concept of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter while adding Pastorius’ Weather Report bandmates Wayne Shorter and Alex Acuña into the fold, and paying tribute to her musical idol on Mingus, she’d have become a lot more recognised as a jazz artist, but this appreciation and acceptance never seemed to come.
Mitchell continued to be grouped in with her folk rock contemporaries despite this clearly not being the sole area she wanted to be present in, and as much as there were similarities between her and the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, it was clear that they were given a free pass to experiment with other genres while she was left to ponder why she wasn’t allowed to traverse different boundaries without receiving backlash.
After decades of trying, it would take her releasing an album consisting largely of jazz standards and reinterpretations of her old work for anyone to begin taking her seriously as a jazz musician, and it wasn’t until 2000 that this was released into the world.
Both Sides Now is considered the masterwork of Mitchell’s late career, and rightfully saw her win Grammys in two categories, as well as a Juno Award for ‘Vocal Jazz Album of the Year’. She later reflected on this sudden influx of recognition as a jazz artist during a 2005 interview with New York Magazine, and stated that while she’d tried for many years to infiltrate the jazz world, it was unusual that this was the first instance of her idols accepting her into their realm.
“Standards are part of my roots, whether it’s visible or not,” she argued. “I think people were surprised that I’d absorbed standards. People just assumed that I didn’t understand that. I don’t think I proved myself to guys like Herbie Hancock until I did standards.”
Fittingly, Hancock would then pay tribute to her with 2007’s River: The Joni Letters, an album of covers of her work that won them both ‘Album of the Year’ at the 2008 Grammys; a sign that she’d finally got the recognition that she deserved. With her own final studio album to date having been released the same year, it became apparent that with this acceptance, she’d achieved virtually everything she’d ever wanted.
