Covering Joni Mitchell Covers

By Rom Watson
c. August 9, 2008 and June 2011

Joni Mitchell’s body of work is an extremely impressive achievement.  Even more impressive than that of her peers.  As much as I love the music of James Taylor, Carole King, Don McLean, Janis Ian, Paul Simon, David Wilcox, etc., I believe that decades from now, Joni Mitchell’s output will be much more highly regarded than the catalogs of these and lesser songwriters.

So one would think that her songs would be covered more frequently.  They have been covered, on two recordings which I will discuss, but neither recording satisfies.  Before I expound on Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters, (which shockingly won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year), and the Nonesuch compilation A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, let me first delineate my taste in Joni Mitchell.

The Joni Mitchell albums I consider her best: Court and Spark; Night Ride Home; Blue
The Joni Mitchell album I feel has a better reputation than it deserves: The Hissing of Summer Lawns
The Joni Mitchell album I find to be most uneven: Wild Things Run Fast
The Joni Mitchell albums I listen to the least: Shadows and Light; Clouds
The Joni Mitchell album I never care to hear again: Mingus
The Joni Mitchell album I listen to more frequently than any other: Dog Eat Dog

That should give you the parameters of my personal tastes in Joni Mitchell’s music, and help you understand the frame of reference that has generated my viewpoint.  (Ranking and discussing all of her albums would be an essay, (or a book), for another occasion.  Here, I will limit myself to the extremes, mentioning only my top four and bottom five.)

I first heard River: The Joni Letters at a friend’s house.  Although I couldn’t give the music my full attention due to the conversation and laughter in the room, I nonetheless formed some definite opinions.

I was very impressed with Tina Turner’s singing, and I wondered if the rest of the album, with all those talented people involved, could really be as bad as it sounded.  Obviously I needed to hear it again.

I’ve now listened to the CD numerous times.  (With the exception of the instrumental track Nefertiti, which was so annoying on first hearing that I never listened to it a second time.  The trumpet made my ears bleed.)  I like jazz, and I love the way Joni Mitchell slid from folksinger to jazz artist in a completely natural and fluid way.  It’s a beautiful example of how music from a single source can be expressed through multiple avenues.  Sadly, River: The Joni Letters is still a disappointment for me, and I would hesitate to recommend it.  However, it is not the abomination I thought it was from a single, distracted hearing.

First of all, I think Edith and the Kingpin is the best thing Tina Turner has done in her ENTIRE CAREER.  Tina Turner came into my consciousness when I was in the fifth grade, and nothing I have heard her do since ever gave me a clue that she could sing as well as she does on Edith and the Kingpin.  But I’ve never thought that song was one of Joni Mitchell’s best.  It never made much of an impression on me until I heard Tina Turner sing it.  So I think Turner would have been even more impressive had she sung a better song, such as Chinese Cafe.

My next three favorite cuts on the CD are the instrumentals Both Sides Now, Sweet Bird and Solitude.  The reason they’re my next three favorites: I’m not impressed with the other guest vocals.  I like Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae on their own albums, but they don’t sound nearly as good on River: The Joni Letters.  Though Leonard Cohen is a great songwriter, he was never a particularly good singer, and now that he’s over 70, his voice is even more of a liability.

I read somewhere, before the CD was released, that Herbie Hancock wanted to explore Mitchell’s lyrics.  And yet most of the arrangements seem at odds with the vocal line, or they dispense with the words altogether.  Joni Mitchell is a world-class lyricist, the only songwriter of her generation who can occasionally be compared to Stephen Sondheim, and yet River: The Joni Letters either omits or negates her lyrics. I can’t find the melody of Both Sides Now anywhere in Herbie Hancock’s version, so I’m not even allowed the option of thinking the lyrics in my head as the song plays.  On Tea Leaf Prophecy they strip the song of its rhythm, which does bring the lyric into sharper focus, but the arrangement doesn’t suit the song.  I like Mitchell’s reading of the lyric, but the rhythm of the original version not only served to counterbalance the melancholy of the lyric, it gave the piece its propulsion.  What I like about jazz is that it can ebb and flow like an ocean, unpredictable yet buoyant, choppy or deep as the mood strikes, as joyful as a leaping dolphin or as somber as a sunken ship.  River: The Joni Letters feels less like an ocean and more like the river of its title, but sadly flowing nowhere.  If Hancock wanted to highlight the words, he should have made the entire CD a cappella.

Four of the tracks are from The Hissing of Summer Lawns, a Joni Mitchell album that is not one of my favorites.  Though I like some of it, (such as the best track, Harry’s House/Centerpiece), the drums on The Jungle Line make me nauseated.  Unfortunately Mr. Hancock did not choose to cover Harry’s House/Centerpiece, he chose to cover The Jungle Line.  Without the emetic drums, thank you very much, but recited by Leonard Cohen.

River: The Joni Letters strikes me as so many missed opportunities.  Why record Amelia when Hejira has always been a better song?  (It’s an unambiguous song about ambiguity.)  And why another version of River?  (Yes, I know it’s a good song, but everyone from Janis Siegel to Barry Manilow to James Taylor has already covered it.  Even the Scottish rock group Travis recorded River.)  Imagine the album that could have been had Mr. Hancock recorded Harry’s House/Centerpiece, had Corinne Bailey Rae recorded Blue Motel Room, had Tina Turner recorded Chinese Café, had Norah Jones recorded For the Roses, had Janis Siegel recorded Woman of Heart and Mind, etc.

Mitchell’s body of work is so impressive that every singer should choose one of her songs to record and make their own, thereby introducing her work to a wider audience.  That was apparently the thinking behind A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, a spotty collection of Mitchell covers released by Nonesuch in 2007.  However, barely half of the recordings work as listenable tracks.  I won’t mention them by name because the five or six that I like won’t be the same five or six you like.  The recordings are such an eclectic mix that no one could be enthused about all of them.  And again, three of the tracks are from The Hissing of Summer Lawns.  (Why do people like that album so much?  It’s not as impressive or as musically inventive as some of her other albums.  It is also the album where some of her melodies began to sound unmelodic.  If it’s fashionable to champion an artist’s lesser-known work, why don’t people champion Dog Eat Dog or Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter?)

James Taylor, Carole King, Don McLean, Janis Ian, Paul Simon, David Wilcox, etc., write music that reverberates within our universe.  Joni Mitchell’s music creates its own universe.

I believe this separate and distinct sonic universe is what attracts people, myself included, to her music, and keeps them listening long after they have dismissed the music of other artists.

Singers succeed or fail at covering her songs to the degree that their sensibilities fit within her universe.  Barbra Streisand succeeded in covering a Joni Mitchell song with her version of I Don’t Know Where I Stand, as did Tina Turner with Edith and the Kingpin, Betty Buckley with I Had a King, Mary Black with Urge for Going, Eva Cassidy with Woodstock, Diana Krall with A Case of You and some of the singers on A Tribute to Joni Mitchell.  Personally, I think cover versions of Joni Mitchell songs by other singers are a good idea.  I’m still waiting for a satisfying collection of them, but I do think they’re a good idea.  Sometimes you want to hear her music filtered through other artists.  So far, the best compilation of Joni Mitchell covers is the one recorded by Joni Mitchell herself: Travelogue.