Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

Someone upthread posted the Shadows and Light clip of Amelia. From there I ended up watching the whole show on youtube. I realize I need much more Joni + the Persuasions in my life. Crazy good rendition of Why Do Fools Fall In Love with Joni as Frankie Lymon. And then a beautiful gospel rendition of Shadows and Light.

...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain) at 6:27 13 Jun 20

XP I was looking at different Joni stuff on wiki, and it's mentioned that she started doing coke on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour (so pre-Hejira), but there's conflicting stories about when she quit: one being sometime in '76 after being 'cured' by a psychic (!), and the other just saying she struggled with addiction into the '80s.

I think it's just safer to assume every classic rock artist was coked out in the mid/late 70s unless you know otherwise

Maybe it's a Canadian thing.

There's also the Kids in the Hall Mississippi Gary sketch, although this is a bit rich coming from a Brit tbh.

I think I've had more weird discussions about "joni mitchell blackface" over the past five years than any other touchy topic.

These days Joni Mitchell is unwell, and she declined to comment for this article except to reassert her often-repeated desire to begin her autobiography, should it ever appear: "I was the only black man at the party."

Jesus!!!

There's also the Kids in the Hall Mississippi Gary sketch, although this is a bit rich coming from a Brit tbh.

I was thinking more of your current Prime Minister tbh but it was a joke anyway.

Yeah, I was taking Trudeau as a given.

(And I knew it was a joke and stand by my response.)

From Yaffe’s biography:

Two years after Joni was booed by a room of black female prisoners in New Jersey, in December 1977, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter was released. Many people who first saw the album cover may not have realized that the image of a black man in full pimp regalia, captured by Norman Seeff’s camera, was Joni herself. Joni’s provocation—a white woman dressed as a black male boss pimp—comes with historical baggage, much of which was unknown to her. Blackface minstrelsy—white performers blacking up with burnt cork and singing “coon songs,” the most famous example of which was Ernest Hogan’s “All Coons Look Alike to Me” — was the dominant form of popular entertainment after the Civil War, all the way through the 1920s vaudeville era. White performers would perform in terrifying makeup and do imitations — sometimes grotesque, sometimes in homage — of the black performers doing a far superior version of songs in early jazz and blues, although there were also famous black minstrel performers, most notably Bert Williams and Johnny Hudgins. The Jazz Singer (1927), the first talkie, was a sentimental biopic for Al Jolson, torn between his Jewish family’s expectation for him to be a cantor, and his passionate need to sing “Mammy” in blackface.

Joni, defending her own costume, also defended Jolson. “Al Jolson’s not a Stepin Fetchit,” Joni told me. “He’s a Jew in blackface, so he’s always getting the better end of the deal, kind of like Bugs Bunny. And I didn’t see anything derogatory. But the prejudice was enormous. What I did that, people thought it was a bro, and it wasn’t stereotypical, it was individual. Why I got away with it . . . I got the greatest reviews for that record in black magazines. They saw the brother, they reviewed it, and they got it.”

It’s not clear how many black journalists even recognized Joni on the cover of the album or how many black magazines actually reviewed it. The black music journalist Greg Tate, who interviewed Joni for Vibe magazine in 1998 and wrote a poem, “How Black Is Joni Mitchell?,” for Joni’s honorary doctorate ceremony a few years later, would come out in passionate support for what he called her “stunt.” Janet Maslin was the only journalist for a major publication, Rolling Stone, to criticize Joni’s album cover. “The album offers what is, one can only hope, the ultimate in cute cover art,” Maslin wrote. She is blunt in her attack: “Here and elsewhere, there seems to be the notion that blacks and Third World people have more rhythm, more fun and a secret, mischievous viewpoint that the author, dressed as a black man in one of the photos on the front jacket, presumes to share.”

Maslin didn’t approve, but she was one of the few journalists who actually noticed. Joni’s costume was so convincing, most people did not realize it was her.

After Joni failed to reach a room full of black female prisoners because she, as Joan Baez said, “couldn’t do black,” she decided she’d one-up them all by being black. “So there came Halloween, and I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard,” Joni recalled. “There were a lot of people out on the street wearing wigs and paint and masks, and I was thinking, ‘What can I do for a costume?’ Then a black guy walked by me with a New York diddybop kind of step, and he said in the most wonderful way, Lookin’ good, sister, lookin’ gooood. His spirit was infectious and I thought, ‘I’ll go as him.’ I bought the makeup, the wig, the sideburns, I went into a sleazy menswear [store] and bought a sleazy hat and a sleazy suit, and that night I went to a Halloween party and nobody knew it was me, nobody.”

When Joni was planning a memoir, she said that the opening would be “I was the only black man at the party,” and her intent was to be a combination of pimp and artistic creation. She would dress up as this character from time to time and never got spotted, even by men who should have known. Sometimes she would call this character Art Nouveau; other times he would be Claude the Pimp. In a 1979 concert taped for Showtime, in the middle of “Furry Sings the Blues,” on the line “everybody’s fly,” she turned into her pimp character. What was troubling was that her desire to be the black man on the street superseded the unsettling history. Art Nouveau/Claude the Pimp, as he appears on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, is a dead ringer for Zip Coon, the minstrel character ridiculed for trying to dress the part of a gentleman. Zip Coon, like Jim Crow and Tambo, was a standard figure in minstrel shows. Zip Coon was the dandy, Tambo was the singing, dancing fool, and Jim Crow was ignorant and poor—a pretty accurate indicator for the intention behind the Jim Crow laws. And yet Chaka Khan, who, as a teenager, had been a member of the militant Black Panther party, had no problem with the cover of the album for which she provided vocals. “I loved the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter,” she said unequivocally. “She’s into color. She’s a world of person, and she lived that, she sang that, she is that. I am, too. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a way to go.”

historical baggage, much of which was unknown to her.

What, was she utterly stupid?

^ TBH the whole biography, while well-researched and very informative, is sometimes frustratingly lauditive and praiseful, so it's not surprise he's trying to come up with such dumb excuses.

jesus christ joni

someone could write a thesis on the racial/gender politics behind this episode

^ TBH the whole biography, while well-researched and very informative, is sometimes frustratingly lauditive and praiseful, so it's not surprise he's trying to come up with such dumb excuses.

― ˈʌglɪɪst preɪ, Sunday, June 14, 2020

Agreed. For once a musical bio that doesn't stint on how the artist creates music.

Janet Maslin knows what's up.

Yeah this whole episode is pretty much in the same vein as the excruciatingly patronizing (although one could charitably see it as self-mockingly patronizing) Furry Sings the Blues

“In a 1979 concert taped for Showtime, in the middle of “Furry Sings the Blues,” on the line “everybody’s fly,” she turned into her pimp character. “
Yeah this was really something unexpected and strange

Yeah, how did she do that for one line?

Reminds me of the Jimmy Page old man transformation scene in the Song Remains the Same movie

it's so crazy I've seen that album cover so many times and never realized it was her

I tried with but I can't do Joni after Hejira, something got lost

the whole episode is so fucked

I don't have any defense here, but it sure seems like a coked-up bad take on Joan Baez doing the Dylan-in-whiteface thing on that same coke-soaked tour

try Night Ride Home.

Is this from the Showtime clip?

https://i.imgur.com/aGQRIgT.gif

Night Ride Home and Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm too

euuugghhhh @ this other crap obv

xp jfc

Canadians 🤣🤣🤣

discogs has the inner sleeve art for Reckless Daughter, which I always thought made it a little more clear exactly who she was trying to piss off, and more importantly who she was inviting in. which of her fans call this her greatest record? pick one, the respect of janet maslin or working with charles mingus?

it was a batshit insane provocation, and absolutely fair enough if forty years on you are all out of time for games like this. but you'll also have to account for why signifying this way in 1978 gained her respect from the quarters that it did. and thank you thread for getting me to the Mingus wiki and discovering that someone posted the Mingus Experimental Sessions to youtube last year

However there's one lone guest loitering in the background, whom no-one seems to know, everyone thinking he's someone else's friend - a svelte black man in a zoot suit with matching chapeau, meticulous afro, wide moustache and big, dark shades.

God knows how fucked up people at this party had to be to think Joni Mitchell passed for a black guy - white folks don't come much whiter looking than Joni Mitchell!

I viscerally hate her singing on Blue so much that I never bothered to check out her other stuff. Am I missing out?

uh

Sacrilege, I know.

No, I meant the thread is full of suggestions. Blue's my least favorite and played of her major albums.

Ah, I see. Time to backtrack then.

Court and Spark boasts more judicious use of her lower register and employs full band arrangements.

Sounds more palatable indeed. Thanks!

have you heard her biggest hit "Help Me"?

people seem to be taking a lot about Don Juan's Reckless Daughter for some reason, must be the music. maybe peep that one

Stop it, Alfred!

I hadn't, no, but it sounds nice so far. I can see myself enjoying the rest of the album.

2xp

pom u gotta hear hissing, but also u gotta get yourself right with blue

I hear you, pom: I have a similar 'Joni tolerance' and I find Blue hard to cope with in places. I absolutely love Hissing of Summer Lawns though, then Court and Spark and Ladies of the Canyon in that order.

I want to say it's an issue with melisma in general but I need to think that through.

I've tried repeatedly so at this point I doubt I ever will, but I'm up for giving The Hissing of Summer Lawns a chance.

xp glad I'm not the only one. I quite like melismatic melodic lines in other contexts, I just don't think Mitchell is a capable or polished enough singer to thoroughly pull it off (on Blue, at least). I also like my would-be confessional solo records starker and less audibly self-satisfied fwiw.

I p much never revisit Blue -- partly because it's tender to the point of discomfort and partly because it was ridiculously overplayed in my college student center coffeeshop, like every damn day for years.

Starbucks sure killed "River" and "Carey" dead.

I quite like melismatic melodic lines in other contexts, I just don't think Mitchell is a capable or polished enough singer to thoroughly pull it off (on Blue, at least).

I love the early folk/singer-songwriter stuff now but I originally avoided her until I heard some of the later jazz fusion-tinged art-pop material. C&S is sort of the transition, imo. I like Hejira so much I once started a thread listing things I like about it. It's a bit more stripped down (xps and maybe starker) but like a washed-out travelogue with Jaco Pastorius on bass, Larry Carlton on electrkc guitar, and her acoustic guitar run through phaser. Shadows and Light is a great overview of that whole period, a live album where she is accompanied by Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker, and Don Alias. I never had a problem with her voice, though.

*electric

Not much in the way of melismatic acrobatics on Hejira.

Not at all, I love how coolly hypnotic the vocal melodies are.

holy shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxMwGTQ1bzU

I've never seen a mediocre performance of "Amelia."

btw it is impossible to kill "carey"