The two albums Joni Mitchell considers “the pinnacle of contemporary music”
Joni Mitchell’s approach to folk music has always been a little different from her contemporaries, and her forward-thinking vision for how her music should sound has always looked beyond the traditional aspects of the genre. While folk music is often regarded as being rooted in minimalist outpourings of emotion, Mitchell chose to make hers a lot less stark by adding opulent arrangements to her work and by also throwing in influences from other genres that seemingly had no place in the folk scene, as far as others were concerned.
Mitchell was far from the first person to upset the folk traditionalists of the world, as Bob Dylan had already ruffled a few feathers by daring to play electric guitar in the mid-1960s; a decision so shocking that it left purists seething for quite some time. When Mitchell arrived in the later part of the decade, it wasn’t such a dramatic thing for folk artists to be toying with electric instrumentation, but the fact that she was merging her love of jazz with folk tradition seemed to be a revelatory combination.
Her introduction of these influences never felt forced or superfluous, though, and much of the reason why it worked so well in her compositions was due to how studied her approach was. Mitchell had grown up absorbing as much jazz music as she possibly could, and her rigorous examination of its features and selective placement of them into her own musical output always felt as though it was done with the utmost care and precision.
Growing up, Mitchell had experience of being a rock and roll dancer—what would have been referred to as lindy, bop or jive at the time—and it was through this that she was introduced to jazz music for the first time. Her father was also a trumpet player, although by her own admission, the jazziest he ever went was the big band style of Harry James or the light music of Leroy Anderson. It had to be through her own exploration that she discovered these different styles that excited her, and, as a teenager, she was lucky enough to be turned onto one artist in particular who changed her perception of music forever.
In a 2004 interview, Mitchell revealed that during her time at school, she was an avid painter, and was regularly commissioned to paint murals, Christmas cards or features for doctor’s offices. “Frequently they would pay me in jazz records,” she explained, “and the record that I had in high school that was given to me for doing a mural was some Miles [Davis].” While she noted that her father didn’t really understand this style of trumpet playing, she recalled how “Miles’s sound went into me at that time”.
This love stuck with her, and some later discoveries made her truly fall in love with the legendary bandleader. “It wasn’t until years later that I got In a Silent Way and Nefertiti that that sound and music became kind of the pinnacle of contemporary music for me,” she continued. “It seemed so far away from where I was. It wasn’t even a direction that I actively pursued, but it seeped in, and eventually I did come to play with Wayne [Shorter] and most of the band.”
Mitchell’s flirtations with jazz would expand just as Davis’ would, and the more interested he became in producing a psychedelic fusion sound on his records with albums like Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. Mitchell responded with equally fusion-centred albums such as The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira. They may never have crossed paths personally or worked together, but their genius is comparable because of the way they allowed jazz to enter them and guide them through their changes in musical identity over the years.
