Trying to get my head around this

[Yosca]

Not that suburban, more outback country but a good painting, and she compares favourably with the three first girls.

Me and my best friend Lillian
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon
Sittin' on the front porch coolin' in the shade
Singin' every song the radio played
Waitin' for the Alabama sun to go down
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town
Me and Lillian
Just across the line
And a little southeast of Meridian
She loved her brother I remember back when
He was fixin' up a '49 Indian
He told her, ? Little sister, gonna ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again"
He never got farther than Vietnam
I was standin' there with her
When the telegram come for Lillian
Now he's lyin' somewhere
About a million miles from Meridian
She said, ? There's not much hope for a red dirt girl
Somewhere out there is a great big world
That's where I'm bound"
"And the stars might fall on Alabama
But one of these days I'm gonna swing
My hammer down"
Away from this red dirt town
I'm gonna make a joyful sound
She grew up tall and she grew up thin
Buried that old dog Gideon
By a crepe myrtle bush in the back of the yard
Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard
Got in trouble with a boy from town
Figured that she might as well settle down
So she dug right in
Across a red dirt line
Just a little south east of Meridian
Yes, she tried hard to love him
But it never did take
Just another way for the heart to break
So she learned to bend
One thing they don't tell you about the blues
When you got 'em
You keep on fallin' 'cause there ain't no bottom
There ain't no end at least not for Lillian
Nobody knows when she started her skid
She was only 27 and she had five kids
Could-a been the whiskey, could-a been the pills
Could-a been the dream she was tryin' to kill
But there won't be a mention in the News of the World
About the life and the death of a red dirt girl
Named Lillian
Who never got any farther
Across the line than Meridian
Now the stars still fall on Alabama
Tonight she finally laid
That hammer down without a sound
In the red dirt ground

Ingvar

Stunning lyrics by Emmylou Harris.

 

[Agaton Sax]

There is so much in Mitchell's private life that makes me turn away In disgust. But as an artist, she does dazzle. In the end, that is how we should judge. There is a marvellous photo, or it may be a video: She is sitting on a lawn with her guitar and I think, a child. The other people may be David Crosby. But the person you must see in the picture is Eric Clapton. He is staring at her guitar, totally absorbed.

The story is that Clapton became enthralled by her guitar playing and wanted to know how she did it. So he visited her and spent the entire weekend staring at her hands. The fact is she had polio as a child and spent a very long in a polio hospital. Her one hand is almost unusable so she developed a technique to play the guitar, and all string instruments (listen to Blue). The Rock god never mustered it.

Her music became weirder as she developed but her lyrics! They are always like delicate flowers in the spring. So much she wrote then got killed by other performers taking sledgehammers to the gossamer words:

Saw a falling star burning
High above the Las Vegas sand
It wasn't the one that you gave to me
That night down south between the trailer
Not the early one that you wish upon
Not the northern one that guides in the sailors

and

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

 

[ron g]

Stunning lyrics by Emmylou Harris.

emmylou wrote boulder to birmingham - one of my favourite tracks ever.

 

[ron g]

........ but her lyrics! They are always like delicate flowers in the spring. So much she wrote then got killed by other performers taking sledgehammers to the gossamer words:

joni mitchell dot com have a tremendous data base of covers of her songs. they do a weekly batch of mp3s of recent covers, with a download link via the e-mail discussion group.
i used to try to keep up, but eventually gave up as it just wasn't worth wading through all that for the very very occasional gem.
stand outs have been mary fahl's version of both sides now, (listed as the 1,000th cover), richard thompson's & tuck & patti's versions of woodstock, & david lahms's jazz takes on joni mitchell.

 

[MusicMan]

Not everyone's cup of tea, but my favourite Joni album:

 

[Agaton Sax]

I'm sure I am going to be sued as they want you to pay $700 for the photo by Henry Dilz. But still. All legal correspondence to Agaton Sax c/o Aunt Mathilda @ Lykopping News, Lykopping, Sweden

Here is the photo of Clapton trying to figure out exactly what she does on the guitar. See post#22.

2173

 

[ron g]

joni seems to have that effect. even way back when she was still joni anderson. in what appears to be the earliest tv recording of her the host oscar brand can't take his eyes off her.

though i am not sure in this case if it was her playing, or the fact that she was so "ornamental".

 

[fdlsys]

Found at the last fair.

In love with almost every album Joni made,

Enormous respect for Carole's music writing talent (Tapestry has been on my TT regularly for the past 50 yrs or so),

Zero interest in Carpenters type of music, yet, I honestly think that Karen was a Mozart of our days, a one in a century wunderkind. Seriously, one of the best natural rhythm and mind blowing technique drummers of all time, and possibly the best - once again natural, born like that - singer EVER!

 

[NADampFan]

Not everyone's cup of tea, but my favourite Joni album:

View attachment 2804

I love it as well Music man.

 

[fdlsys]

For anyone not familiar with Karen's extraordinary talent, here's a snippet. She was 18 at the time.

 

[Agaton Sax]

The more I think about it, the more I realise what an earth-shattering few months, weeks, days(?) that would have been. Going into the studios there was no doubt that the Carpenters were the greatest stars

But their fame was in descendency. Although Karen was only 21 at the time they were very much of the past, They were recording "Greatest Hits". An end-of-career move. Richard Carpenter is on record as saying that they had no songs. Although he had co-composed a few of their earlier hits, he was more of an arranger than a writer and she, although a talented musician, was not a composer. They were very much of a past age where musicians sang and composers composed. Like Sinatra, Bennet, Nat King Cole and others. There was a massive upswing of the singer-songwriter where people sang their own songs. They may not have been as great performers but it was more direct and honest and that is what people of the time wanted.

Carole King was crossing that line then. Although she started, like Neil Diamond, strictly as a composer in that song factory, New York's Brill Building, her personal life had forced her to LA, where she very much crossed over to the singer-songwriter camp with this album. In fact with Tapestry, she may have just given more momentum to this phenomenon than any other. Ironically, one of the Carpenter's greatest hits was written by her (It's going to take some time.)! And here she was, next door, recording her brilliant pieces. Did the Carpenters realise this? Were they bitter?

Joni Mitchell of course, was an ex-Folkie, singing what she felt. Very much the future. One of her numerous ex-lovers complained that he would sweat for days to compose a new song and play it proudly for her. It was then her turn and she would just play the string of masterpieces she composed after breakfast that morning!

 

[Stefan]

For me, Joni is more a poet, a wordsmith or a storyteller than perhaps a musician. Her lyrics tower above the tunes, which are just a vehicle to get the message across..Not that I do not relate to her songs in totality - I love her work as an artist.

I found this fascinating recording while exploring some interesting stuff she did some time ago.

.

And this album made a boring Sunday afternoon in a hotel earlier this year something special.

 

[Agaton Sax]

Hee-Hee. Sometimes being obsessed with sound quality can be a boon. I was seriously listening to "Tapestry" for the first time ever. Normally I get stuck in 70s Nostalgia with images of mustard-coloured Volksies and young women with Maxi skirts and sandals and don't bother with crossing the Ts too much while listening to Tapestry.

But today, with Ingvar's magical cart I listened and there were the backing vocalists: James Taylor, of course, but the woman sounds like---no it is Joni Mitchell. Duh.., I just could have read the credits! Did she pop in from the "Blue " sessions, did she come in especially early? Imagine Karen Carpenter also did the backing. No, she wouldn't. Damn sure she would have loved to but would the machine allow it? Would the others think her vibe was too square? but, imagine "Would you still love me tomorrow?" with her on backing? Oh well.

 

[AlleyCat]

Words escape me :

 

[fdlsys]

Words escape me :

When you got it, you got it. Not a dry eye in the audience.

 

[Stefan]

There are a few lovely photos in this piece

Joni Mitchell: Ladies Of The Canyon

Now reissued on 180g vinyl, Joni Mitchell's third album found the singer-songwriter perfecting her confessional – and highly influential – style, says Steve Sutherland It's complicated. There's a song on Blue, Joni Mitchell's fourth LP, which is not the album we're here to celebrate. The track's...

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