This is the third box set reissue of studio albums from Joni Mitchell, released as part of a far-reaching Joni Mitchell Archives reissue program of Mitchell’s music that also includes several live, rare, and previously unreleased music projects.
The first box in this series, The Reprise Albums (1968–1971), covered Mitchell’s first four albums (Song to a Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, and Blue). The second box, The Asylum Albums (1972–1975), covered her first four albums on Asylum (For the Roses, Court and Spark, Miles of Aisles, and The Hissing of Summer Lawns). This box covers her last four albums on Asylum (Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Mingus, and Shadows and Light).
While Mitchell’s studio album Court and Spark, her second Asylum album, which was released in 1974, was her commercial zenith in the ’70s, her next album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns released in 1975, boasted a broader musical palette. Although she had been expanding her sound as far back as For the Roses and introduced healthy doses of jazz into her pop/folk-rock sound on Court and Spark, Hissing was a real departure and the beginning of narrow-minded, mostly male rock critics and record executives questioning her less-commercial direction and experimentation.
This new box picks up where Hissing left off. As with the two previous boxes in this series, we will review the vinyl box set version of this project. Hejira, the first album here, released in 1976 and the follow-up to Hissing, is an even more varied musical effort, with many songs essentially long prose poem travelogues. The music is evocative of a woman living her life out on the road, but also recalling her Canadian upbringing.
As expansive as the music is, it’s breathtaking in its simplicity and beauty and in the characters in the songs that are well drawn and go beyond Mitchell’s personal confessional singer-songwriter approach which she defined in the early ’70s. “Coyote” is about Sam Sheperd and Mitchell’s impressions of him while they were briefly together on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. There are other wonderful characters here such as Amelia Earhart (“Amelia”), Furry (on “Furry Sing the Blues”), and Sharon (on “Song for Sharon”). Like she does on “Twisted” from Court and Spark, Mitchell turns in a flawless classic jazz vocal on “Blue Motel Room.”
With Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, released in 1977, Mitchell proves that Hissing and Hejira were not just brief stylistic detours but the musical shape of things to come. While some songs on Reckless Daughter could have been leftovers from Hejira and “Jericho” premiered on the live Miles of Aisles album in 1974, the rest adds even more colors to her vast musical canvas. “Dreamland” and especially “The Tenth World” pick up where “The Jungle Line” on Hissing left off, with even deeper explorations of African roots music. Mitchell experimented with African music long before Paul Simon and with jazz long before Sting, although those two artists both continued the artistic success of Mitchell’s first forays into those styles.
Reckless Daughter also includes the sprawling “Paprika Plains,” which takes up all of side two with its orchestral musical passages and impressionistic lyrics. While the album was panned and her record company unceremoniously released it at the very end of that year after the peak holiday shopping frenzy subsided, it reflects an artist who was adept at deftly delving into any musical style, creating something new and fresh and writing lyrics of visionary beauty and weight. It’s interesting to note that the original cover, probably too politically incorrect for today, has been replaced. While its understandable, it did reflect a certain sense of humor Mitchell was trying convey at the time, which many seemed to miss.
Her next album was Mingus. Released in the 1979, it would turn out to be her last studio album for Asylum and her last studio album of the 1970s before she returned with Wild Things Run Fast in 1982. While Mitchell began her experimentation with Hissing, continued with Hejira, and seemed to reach full flowering on Reckless Daughter, she went completely native on Mingus.
The album was a collaboration between Mitchell and Charles Mingus. Mingus was one of the most groundbreaking, challenging and irascible figures in jazz history. Primarily a bassist, he was also a renowned composer. Mitchell clearly had an affinity for working with brilliant, yet troubled jazz bass players. Yet, on this album Jaco Pastorius was gone and Eddie Gomez and Stanley Clarke were on bass. Maybe working with Mingus and Jaco together would have been one too many tortured jazz geniuses for one album.
Along with Clarke, other jazz fusion musos such as Jan Hammer, Tony Williams, and John McLaughlin were in the band. Williams and McLaughlin of course also played in the famed Miles Davis Quintet, another musical collaboration that informed Mitchell’s jazz ensemble quest and one that would also clearly influence Sting. Additionally, older legends such as Gerry Mulligan and Phil Woods were on hand. Still on board here with Mitchell from her Court and Spark days was John Guerin on drums.
Many critics disliked the album even more than the two previous albums and some questioned how Mitchell could even think of making a jazz album with Mingus. In fact, the album is an at times haunting rumination on the state of jazz and blues survivors in the late ’70s, a celebration of Mingus and a chance for Mitchell to put all her musical chips into being a jazz bandleader.
While primarily a jazz album, Mitchell’s singular musical approaches to composition and guitar tuning make this a timeless, misunderstood masterpiece that sounds fresh and light years ahead of its time even all these years later. It draws to an end Mitchell’s arguably prime ’60s/’70s years. It also is very much a blueprint for what Sting would do after leaving The Police, particularly on his The Dream of the Blue Turtles debut solo album and Bring On The Night tour and movie.
Mitchell’s next album, Shadows and Light, a double live album, would be an even more accurate template for Bring On The Night. Featuring a jazz who’s who as the backing band (Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Don Alias, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker), Mitchell and company jammed though jazzy turns on her pre-Hissing catalog (“In France They Kiss on Main Street,” “Free Man in Paris,” and “Woodstock”), gave full-on jazz readings of her Hissing– to Mingus-era songs and, by adding the Persuasions on some songs and interjecting music and film soundtrack clips from rock’s early days (Rebel Without A Cause, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”), deepened the rebel stance Mitchell so defiantly assumed by going so far off the pop reservation.
It all works marveously, as Mitchell gets to play jazz bandleader, which she does effortlessly, as well as to jam live with some jazz heavyweights and have a lot of fun. The album had both a VHS and a DVD companion release. The video included two extra tracks, the pre-Hissing “Raised on Robbery” and “Jaco’s Solo.” Solos by Metheny and Alias were included on the double album. Mitchell’s continuing, fruitful and groundbreaking collaboration with Jaco did have its occasional bumps on the road. There were times when Pastorius would step up and take his solos on longer-than-expected showboating workouts. He was never shy about what he thought of himself, which that he was the best jazz bass player alive. The funny thing is that few argued with that statement then and even less would now.
The four albums are housed in a sturdy, slipcase box. An album-sized, six-page booklet of new original art and an essay written by Meryl Streep is included, and the original artwork and packaging (except for the cover of Reckless Daughter) is painstakingly duplicated to perfection. The sound quality and pressings are superb.
The period covered in this box (along with The Hissing of Summer Lawns) was Mitchell’s most troublesome musical period. The problem wasn’t Mitchell, it was the mostly New York rock journalism mob of the day, made up of largely male rock music nerds, who simply wanted Mitchell to stay in her poppy, girl, singer-songwriter, folk-rock lane. It’s interesting to note that none other than Prince found the recording at the beginning of this period, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, to be one of the most important albums of his musical life before he became a recording artist.
Now that a Mitchell revival is in full swing, these albums can be appreciated for what they really are, highly influential, bold, and extremely listenable treasures.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
