Reasons to love Joni Mitchell's Hejira album

I always used to think the song was slightly patronising, it's only been in the last year or so that I've felt like I really got the lyrics. And this has been one of my absolute favourite albums for ten years. Odd how sometimes things just slide over you like that.

Likewise Joni could very well have been a diva bitch one minute and then felt deeply uncomfortable with success the next.

Night Ride Home carried me through autumn, that thing is underrated - even her gigantic-ego resetting of a Yeats poem works for me

Not so good, nowhere near as good... and occasionally fucking terrible.

Joni is nearly always bad at those straight rock'n'roll-ish tracks.

I really should get round to hearing/owning Taming The Tiger, Shadows And Light (Live)... and maybe Both Sides Now and Travelogue just to complete things.

Does anyone else fucking HATE Jaco's playing and tone on Hejira...drives me nuts, mr. bloop bleeeeeble ddee whale humping sound maker beret dude.

I never understand the hate toward "Furry Sings the Blues," tbh.

But I love the work with Joni.

I guess the Jaco thing is mostly cuz I prefer the more forward moving vers. of Coyote on The Last Waltz so much better...it feels like low flying crop spraying plane zooming over empty fields (on the Last Waltz)

This counts as another reason to love this record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYF6T6bfCw4

iirc, Hejira is Prince's all-time favorite record, by anyone.

I love Hejira almost as much as Court and Spark, but this is as far as I've gotten, chronologically, in Joni's discography. I took a stab at Mingus but, to echo some of the comments upthread, I just can't get with that fretless bass guitar sound. Intellectually, I can recognize and appreciate the importance of what Jaco did, but I can't stand to listen to it.

Get Night Ride Home!

iirc, Hejira is Prince's all-time favorite record, by anyone.

That might be 'Hissing' I think.

I bought Night Ride Home thanks to this thread. I've never been able to call it anything other than a good minor record with a couple of tremendous tunes (e.g. "Come in From the Cold").

Naw I think there's so much amazing stuff on here (beyond "Come In From The Cold" which I agree is stunning). The chilling "old as the hills" vibe of "When All The Slaves Free" (her reedily murmured "ecstasy"... "tragedy"...), the heart-cutting double-tracked vocals on "Cherokee Louise", the perfect Tango in the Night pop of "Nothing Can Be Done", the absolute desolation of "Two Grey Rooms"...

I love the sound of her voice here too, damaged by smoking but still just supple enough to hit the targets it aims for, making the damage into just a metaphor for emotional damage, the sense of having seen too much that runs through the album. After this it got to the point where she just sounded limited a lot of the time (though she did use her vocals to great effect on particular songs here and there).

It was only recently that I realized furry sings the blues was about a real singer, furry lewis

yeah he's good. wasn't happy about the song tho
"The way I feel" says Furry "is that your name is proper only to you, and when you use it you should get results from it. She shouldn't have used my name in no way, shape, form or faction without consultin' me 'bout it first. The woman came over here and I treated her right, just like I does everybody that comes over. She wanted to hear 'bout the old days, said it was for her own personal self, and I told it to her like it was, gave her straight oil from the can." He stares at the surrealistic photo on the Hejira cover. "But then she goes and puts it all down on a record, using my name and not giving me nothing! I can't stop nobody from talkie' 'bout Beale Street, 'cause the street belongs to everybody. But when she says 'Furry,' well that belongs to me!" (Though Joni Mitchell had no response to Furry's comments, her manager, Elliot Roberts, responded: "All she said about him was, 'Furry sings the blues' the rest is about the neighborhood. She doesn't even mention his last name. She really enjoyed meeting him, and wrote about her impressions of the meeting, He did tell her that he didn't like her, but we can't pay him royalties for that. I don't pay royalties to everybody who says they don't like me. I'd go broke.")

look, i realize this is coming a bit late, but since it seems to have been revived about a year ago... i feel the need to point something out. when joni mention's she is 'not familiar with what you play' she is referring to WC Handy, who's 'cast in bronze, and he's standin in a little park, with his trumpet in his hand, like he's listenin back...
-so throughout the song she is comparing her limited knowledge of one legend, with her experience of meeting a dying one, in a city which reflects them, and which they embody -she is clearly an outsider, but an admirer.
i am so surprised that so many people who seem to otherwise know her well, or at least this album, did not catch this?!

as for reasons to love hejira (the album)...
the beginning and energy throughout black crow
and
'palm trees in the porchlight like slick black cellophane'

welcome to ILX, ramblin rose! if you want, here is an introduction thread:

Introduce Yourselves!

wow - never read that story about Furry liking her even less after Hejira!

Here's the RS article:

Furry Lewis is Furious at Joni
by Mark Seal - February 24, 1977

MEMPHIS - There's an electrical wire hanging down in front of bluesman Furry Lewis' small, olive green duplex. It drapes across his front porch, and Furry is so worried about it he can hardly get drunk and have fun with the people who have come to visit, "Somebody call up the 'lectric department to fix that thing!" he yells, sitting in the bed that has become his stage and pouring a dose of Ten High bourbon into a well-worn shot glass. "l know I've always been a rascal, but I ain't never done nothin' bad enough to be in the 'lectric chair."

Age and cataracts have dulled Furry's eyesight - though not his feisty spirit - and his public appearances have been whittled down to a cherished few, but Furry's still got the world at his bedside. Guests, from young neighborhood kids seeking guitar lessons to celebrities, stream into his three-room flat.

Lewis played his slide-driven, talking guitar blues with the father of the blues, W.C Handy, on Beale Street in the early 1900s. Today, the street is crumbling, and a small statue of Handy toting a horn overlooks the ruins. To Furry Lewis, Beale Street was "where somebody was killed every Saturday night and born every Sunday."

At arm's reach from his bed, Furry's got all his daily necessities: battered Martin electric guitar and small amp, two half gallons of Ten High, a .38 revolver stashed inside a drawer, his walking stick, a teddy bear and a cigar box labeled "Business". "I'm 83 years old half blind and gots a wooden leg," he says. "But I sure gots a lot of friends. "

But Furry's got his problems, too. Just a few weeks ago, he explains, he played at a local club and still hasn't been paid. And then there's "that woman" who recorded a song about him.

The song, "Furry Sings the Blues," is on Joni Mitchell's latest album, Hejira. In it, Mitchell paints Furry "down and out in Memphis, Tennessee," and his music "mostly muttering now and sideshow spiel." She had visited the aging bluesman and the pitiful situation on Beale Street had led her to write:

Furry sings the blues
Fallin' to hard luck
And time and other thieves
While our limo is shining on his shanty street.
Old Furry sings the blues.

"The way I feel " says Furry "is that your name is proper only to you, and when you use it you should get results from it. She shouldn't have used my name in no way, shape, form or faction without consultin' me 'bout it first. The woman came over here and I treated her right, just like I does everybody that comes over. She wanted to hear 'bout the old days, said it was for her own personal self, and I told it to her like it was, gave her straight oil from the can." He stares at the surrealistic photo on the Hejira cover. "But then she goes and puts it all down on a record, using my name and not giving me nothing! I can't stop nobody from talkie' 'bout Beale Street, 'cause the street belongs to everybody. But when she says 'Furry,' well that belongs to me!" (Though Joni Mitchell had no response to Furry's comments, her manager, Elliot Roberts, responded: "All she said about him was, 'Furry sings the blues' the rest is about the neighborhood. She doesn't even mention his last name. She really enjoyed meeting him, and wrote about her impressions of the meeting, He did tell her that he didn't like her, but we can't pay him royalties for that. I don't pay royalties to everybody who says they don't like me. I'd go broke.")

Still, Furry can't deny the truths of "Furry Sings the Blues," with its references to Beale Street's doom, that "history falls/ To parking lots and shopping malls."

"They only make a statue of you when you dead and gone," Furry says. "I've known a whole lots of musicianers in my life and lots of 'em are dead now. But I guess that Handy's the only one that's ant a statue of him. But then I ain't gone yet.

"Now I know I ain't a star," he says, reaching for his glass and winking with a wise old grin "But I sure might be a moon."

Don't judge Joni on "Free Man In Paris", it's one of her most awkward songs lyrically.
However am I the only one who thinks the cold war metaphor in "Blue Motel Room" is brilliant?

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, April 13, 2006

I think there were country songs almost ten years prior that also had puns on Cold War with relationship subjects

http://www.atomicplatters.com/platters.php?id=C0_9_1

shit....Floyd Tillman's 1949 country classic "This Cold War With You". Don't know if there are others

It's not so much the fact of the Cold War pun as the way she runs with the metaphor:

"We're gonna have to hold ourselves a peace talk
In some neutral cafe
You lay down your... sneeeeeaking round the town, honey
and I'll lay down the highways"

oh yeah, no doubt, those are great lyrics. not that anyone here would care, but i was interested to learn that the male love interest on this record is the playwright Sam Shepard ("Coyote")

Thank you; we've got our first cold morning in Savannah and this will be the perfect thing to listen to while driving the kids to school.

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs

awful good

The lyrics are just next level, the sheer craft of them.

Something I was struck by recently is how perfectly each opening line sets up the song’s story (not in the sense of encapsulating it; more like dropping a pin on a map and then exploring outwards from there) and draws you in:

- “No regrets, Coyote / we just come from such different sets of circumstance”
- “I was driving across the burning desert when I spotted six jet planes / Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain”

etc.

You immediately want to know what is coming.

This is my favourite JM album. Going to listen again right now.

https://i.postimg.cc/QNwMpKvS/Screenshot-20240530-213416-Firefox.jpg

Great deep dive into Hejira in the new Uncut, (featuring a few bits, I must confess, by me)

https://www.uncut.co.uk/publications/uncut-july-2024-146032/

I'll have to get my hands on it!

There are some good live videos of this era of Joni Mitchell and her all star jazz band with Jaco, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker and Don Alias online.

Definitely worth looking up on the tube.

This is my favorite Joni album (although Court comes close) but it only hits at full impact in mid-late Autumn.

Hejira demo (working title "Traveling") released as part of archives vol. 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5wLysKasGU

sounds great, haven't had time to dive in proper

in case that embed is coming up as unavailable for anyone else
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9h2UmEXYuo

my favorite Joni album by a long way. I don't always love Jaco and Larry Carlton but they're both perfect on it.

wow the Hejira album demos on this Archives release are just exquisite. So alive.