Kind of "Blue": A Tribute to Joni's Classic

The best stories about, and versions of, a dozen songs on its 50th anniversary this week. With covers by Brandi Carlile, Diana Krall, Linda Ronstadt, Natalie Merchant, Olivia Rodrigo and...Nazareth.

You may well have missed the major online package the NY Times dropped this past weekend marking the 50th anniversary (oh yes, another one) of Joni Mitchell’s Blue album. It includes dozens of photos, links to the songs, 3 or 4 comments on each cut from the likes of James Taylor, Brandi Carlile, Judy Collins, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and some younger, less famous stars. Below I note each song in the same order as the album, with one of those quotes—plus my own video picks (some are Joni live, others are cover songs), plus two songs you probably don’t know were booted from the final album. (Note: A new interview with her by Cameron Crowe here.) First, the usual cartoon, and then my standard request: share, comment, tweet, subscribe (it’s still free).

Feeling “Blue”: Both Sides, Now

“All I Want”

Rosanne Cash: “James Taylor’s guitar playing…it’s got a weird sound to it. And yet it was exactly right for what she was singing. She produced it herself. There weren’t women producers then. And she didn’t try a lot of different musical arrangements. So it was very singular. There are few albums that change your life. Blue came out when I had just turned 16 and it came at this fulcrum of going out of childhood — feeling all the passion of what I wanted to do with my life, and the urgency and the fear and everything, and then Blue. This is a weird thing to be a revelation, given my childhood and my family, but I understood for the first time that a woman could be a songwriter. She just laid it out in these almost journalistic lines that were still so poetic, so dark, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I probably would not be a songwriter had it not been for Blue.”

Here’s Joni singing the album opener—before it was even finished—on tour in UK (being abroad is one of the subjects of the album), and playing the dulcimer (she took that three-string instrument with her because less bulky than a guitar). Then a cover by Natalie Merchant.

“My Old Man”

Graham Nash: “It was an intense time for Joni and I. Obviously there are a couple of songs on the record that I recognize, from when she would write them in the house, that involved me. ‘My Old Man,’ ‘River.’ She finished the album after we parted, but for many months I saw her there writing this stuff. It was a fascinating process to see, I must confess. It’s as if she tore her skin off and just released all her nerves into music.”

Joni sings at the piano this time.

“Little Green”

Judy Collins: “I was always intrigued with ‘Little Green’ because it is a story that touches my heart. It’s all about the relationship between mothers and children. She gave up a child; I knew because it was, let’s say, bandied about between a few women that I knew and a couple of guys in New York who were very close to her. But it’s something that she was not talking about at that time, openly. And after Blue I think writing the song must have created a window through which she could see that it was more than all right to talk about. It was essential to talk about. And then she was able to discover her daughter and have a relationship with her.”

Brandi Carlile, big fan, live in studio:

“Carey”

Stephen Stills: “Playing bass on ‘Carey’ was a matter of happenstance, because I actually could understand the underpinning in all those weird tunings. I was absolutely mad for her. She just had this thing that was ethereal and gorgeous and down to earth and loving and hard-core. And dedicated to her art.”

Joni live in London again:

“Blue”

James Taylor: “That was written after we parted company. I find that difficult to separate from the way I feel about the song. It’s a darker song. ‘Crown and anchor me/Or let me sail away.’ I can’t tell you anything other than that it has a deep impact.”

The album version hard to beat (though many have tried):

“California”

Renee Fleming: “She probably helped me develop my voice, because as a fan I was singing along with her all the time in high school. I would harmonize up above her. It was really a true soprano voice. And yet she had a full range — I’m sure it was two-and-a-half octaves.”

Joni at the massive Isle of Wight fest in 1970—and then don’t miss an interview with her about writing the song which ollows.

“This Flight Tonight”

Pete Agnew, from band Nazareth: “So we said to her, ‘We’re just releasing your song.’ And she said, ‘With a rock band?’ And we went, ‘Yeah, would you like to hear it?’ It sounded amazing, because it was in the studio. She and Henry [Lewy, the engineer] were absolutely tickled, you could tell they weren’t just being polite. She made us a cup of tea, and we sat around for a wee while, and away we went. The next year, one of the guys from the record company in London came up to see us and said, 'You’re going to love this, I went to see Joni Mitchell at the New Victoria Theater, and she said, I’d like to open with a Nazareth tune.’ Tell that to your grandchildren!”

Hair-band Joni? Yes, Nazareth had a number one hit with this in the UK in 1974.

“River”

David Crosby: “I watched her write it, I’ve written with her, I love her to this day, I think she’s the best of us. But that record, some of those songs, I just don’t know how you could beat ’em. ‘River’? Holy [expletive]. I remember the first time I heard it, I felt like quitting the business and becoming a gardener.

Two generations of covers: Linda Ronstadt and then young Olivia Rodrigo, who was #1 on the album charts this month.

“A Case of You”

Judy Collins: “I’m always thinking it must be Leonard [Cohen], but who knows? It is interesting the way so much of this material rubs against with and creates the sparks out of what was going on in L.A. at that time, in that golden era. And with all of those incredible men, with many of whom she had affairs. She beat my list.”

Of the many covers, the best, for me (sorry, Prince), remains Diana Krall’s live, in Paris.

“The Last Time I Saw Richard”:

Graham Nash: “I keep coming back to the thought that this was 50 years ago, half a century ago. And that music is still turning people on. That music freed women in a very deep way. When Joni Mitchell was pouring her heart and soul into the music, every woman knew exactly what she was talking about. And it freed female artists to start doing that.”

From the album:

Bonus Cuts:

After finishing the album, Joni wrote two more songs, “All I Want” and “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” so she cut two: Her earliest classic, “Urge for Going,” which she had never recorded—the first song I ever heard from her, via the Tom Rush cover, on Canadian radio—and the very atypical “Hunter, The Good Samaritan,” which never did make an album.

“Urge for Going” below comes from Canada TV in, gasp, 1966 and “Hunter” in 1970.

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.