Joni Mitchell: Encyclopedia II - Joni Mitchell - Early life

Joni Mitchell - Early life

A painter who had also dabbled in piano, guitar and ukulele since childhood, Mitchell took her surname from a brief marriage to folksinger Chuck Mitchell in 1965. She performed frequently in coffee houses and folk clubs and became well known for her unique style of song writing and her innovative guitar style. Personal and often self-consciously poetic, her songs were strengthened by her extraordinarily wide-ranging voice (with a range in pitch at one time covering over four octaves) and unique guitar playing, tuning the instrument in unorthodox manners to produce a distinctive rhythmic, driving sound. She has been a cigarette smoker since the age of nine, which may explain the unique texture to her voice, which was especially prominent in her later albums. She claims to have fallen in love with smoking directly upon taking her first puffs, stating that other children in her proximity who were also smoking, broke out in fits of coughing. She says it felt right to her from the very beginning.

Around the time when she left her home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan she lost her virginity and became pregnant at the same time. Unable to raise a child so young in her life, and with no other alternatives, she was forced to give her daughter up for adoption. This remained a private part of her life during the bulk of her early/progressing career. While playing one night in a New York establishment, a young David Crosby witnessed her perform and was immediately stricken by her ability and her draw as an artist. He took her under his wing and as cited by Crosby himself, when making someone unaware aware of Mitchell's allure, he would simply "roll them a joint", and ask that they enjoy the experience.

Much of her initial acclaim was as a result of other artists covering her songs; her first songwriting credit to hit the charts, "Urge for Going", was a success for country singer George Hamilton IV and for folk singer Tom Rush then many years later by the Scottish band Travis. Mitchell's own 1967 recording of the song was released on the flip side of the 1972 single "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio", but was not released on an album until the Hits compilation in 1996. Judy Collins had a top-ten hit in early 1968 with "Both Sides Now", and British folk rock group Fairport Convention included "Chelsea Morning" and "I Don't Know Where I Stand" on their debut album, recorded in late 1967, and the otherwise unreleased "Eastern Rain" on their second album the following year. The songs on her first two solo albums Joni Mitchell (Song to a Seagull) (1968) and Clouds (1969) were archetypes of the nascent singer-songwriter movement of the time.

By her third album, Ladies of the Canyon (1970), maturity brought a record infused with the spirit of California life (the canyon of the title is perhaps both Topanga Canyon and Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles) as well as containing her first major hit single, the environmental "Big Yellow Taxi" (about paving paradise to put up a parking lot), and her song "Woodstock", about the music festival, which was later a hit for both Crosby, Stills and Nash and Matthews Southern Comfort. (Ironically, Mitchell did not even go to Woodstock, having cancelled her appearance at the festival on the advice of her manager for fear that she would miss a scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show.) "For Free" is the first of Mitchell's many songs that underscore the dichotomy between the benefits of her stardom and its costs, both in terms of its pressure and of the loss of privacy and freedom it entails.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki