FAMOUS CANADIANS:
JONI MITCHELL
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, she was one of the leading folk performers, racking up Grammy after Grammy. Let’s examine the facts on the talented Canadian native, Joni Mitchell. • We know her as Joni Mitchell, but she was born Roberta Joan Anderson. Her father, a Royal Canadian Air Force flight lieutenant, was stationed in Fort Macleod, Alberta, during World War II, instructing pilots, and it was here that Roberta was born in 1943. • As a child, Joni developed an interest in classical piano when several of her friends were taking music lessons, and she developed a love for Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven, and Debussy. She herself began piano lessons at age 6. But when she was 8, calamity struck in the form of polio. It was 1951, before Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was in use, and an epidemic swept through the area. Joni was bedridden for weeks, and during her confinement, she became interested in singing, frequently practicing on her fellow patients. • Physical weakness following her recovery forced Joni to leave behind any athletic interests she may have had, causing her to fully pursue the arts. Singing, poetry, and painting became her loves. As a teen, she began singing in small nightclubs in western Canada, as well as adding songwriting to her list of accomplishments. Her playing and songwriting took on a different sound due to a weakness in her left hand as a result of the polio. This made it impossible for her to play certain chords, so she created a different sound with alternative chords she could manage, chords that Mitchell herself calls “Joni’s weird chords.”
Tell ‘Em You Saw Their Ad in Tidbits! Advertisers make Tidbits possible
• Joni played gigs in local coffeehouses in Calgary, saving up money to fund her real desire – art school. She enrolled in Calgary’s Alberta College of Art and Design to pursue painting, but dropped out after a year. It was in a Toronto folk club that she met a Michigan folk singer, Chuck Mitchell. Within a week, the pair were married, followed by an immediate move to the United States, where they began playing music together. • The marriage didn’t last but her music did, and in 1968, when she was 25, Joni Mitchell recorded her debut album, produced by David Crosby. It was followed closely by her second album “Clouds,” which featured her famous composition “Both Sides Now” and earned Mitchell her first Grammy. She wrote and recorded “Big Yellow Taxi” in 1970, with its well-known line, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” One of the biggest hits for the group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, “Woodstock,” was composed by Mitchell. • She began her move from folk songs to jazz and blues in 1974 with the album “Court and Sparks,” which is now her most successful album. Rolling Stone magazine ranks it as #111 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. • Joni Mitchell has received eight Grammy Awards, most recently in 2008. In 2002, she was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which described her as “one of the most important female recording artists of the rock era.” She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, and into the Canadian songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007. • Today, Mitchell is retired with numerous health problems. She began smoking at age 9, and it has been her lifelong habit.
Tidbits of Grand Forks/ East Grand Forks is Locally Owned and Operated.