Joni Mitchell painted her album covers and quit the road
Roberta Joan Mitchell (born 1943), a Canadian singer-songwriter and painter, emerged from 1960s folk clubs into jazz-tinged songcraft. Court and Spark (1974) became her best seller with Help Me and Free Man in Paris. She produced most of her records, designed most covers, and eventually stopped touring after her nineteenth album.
Born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alberta, on 7 November 1943, she was the daughter of a teacher and an air force flight lieutenant who trained pilots. The family moved between western Canadian bases during the war, then to Maidstone and North Battleford in Saskatchewan, where her father became a grocer; that small-town childhood surfaces in songs such as Song for Sharon.
After singing in Saskatoon and Toronto clubs she moved to the United States in 1965. Other artists recorded her Both Sides, Now, The Circle Game and Chelsea Morning first, which helped win her a Reprise deal and a 1968 debut, Song to a Seagull. Settled in Southern California, she wrote Big Yellow Taxi and Woodstock in 1970. Blue (1971) ranked third in Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the greatest albums and first on NPR's 2017 list of the best albums by women.
Court and Spark in 1974 moved toward jazz and became her biggest seller. Around 1975 her voice deepened from mezzo-soprano toward a wide contralto, and her open-tuned guitar pieces grew more complex. She worked with Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny, and Charles Mingus invited her onto his final recordings.
Calling herself a painter derailed by circumstance, she produced most of her own records and designed most covers. A sharp critic of the industry, she stopped touring and issued her last album of new songs, her nineteenth, in 2007. A brain aneurysm in 2015 required long rehabilitation, but she returned with a surprise set at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival. Her honours include eleven Grammys and a 1997 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
Source: Joni Mitchell
