Joni Mitchell (CA)

About

Also known as: Joni Mitchel, Roberta Joan Anderson, Roberta Joan Mitchell

Few albums have cast as long a shadow as Joni Mitchell's Blue from 1971, a record so revered that Rolling Stone bumped it up to number 3 on their greatest albums list in 2020. Mitchell built her sound out of deeply personal lyrics and open tuned guitar voicings she developed partly to compensate for a left hand weakened by childhood polio, and that harmonic inventiveness became her signature. Songs like Big Yellow Taxi, Woodstock and Both Sides Now made her a defining voice of her generation. She never stood still stylistically. Court and Spark in 1974 brought jazz textures and two genuine radio hits, and by the late 1970s she was collaborating with heavyweights like Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, even working directly with Charles Mingus on his final recordings. A brain aneurysm in 2015 sidelined her for years, but she came back in a serious way, returning to live performance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival and headlining shows as recently as 2023 and 2024.