- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The debut album by Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell might be the most botched rollout of an album by a major record label in history.
Joni Mitchell – Joni Mitchell (1968): The debut album by Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell might be the most botched rollout of an album by a major record label in history. Joni Mitchell had already written several classic songs that include “Chelsea Morning”, “The Circle Game”, and “Both Sides, Now”; and Judy Collins would have a Grammy-winning Top Ten hit later in 1968 with her cover of “Both Sides, Now”. (As an aside, Chelsea Clinton, the only child of President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, was named after “Chelsea Morning”; furthermore, Chelsea and Clinton are adjoining neighborhoods on the West Side of Manhattan). None of Joni Mitchell’s earlier songs appear on the album; Joni Mitchell is a concept album, with songs about urban life on Side 1 (subtitled “I Came to the City”) and songs about the countryside and the seashore on Side 2 (subtitled “Out of the City and Down to the Seaside”).
The song title “The Pirate of Penance” is a takeoff on the name of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance, and Joni Mitchell has said that “Sisotowbell” in “Sisotowbell Lane” stands for: “Somehow, in spite of trouble, ours will be ever lasting love”. There are no hits here, and most of these songs are not particularly well known; but this is a strong acoustic performance of a wide assortment of beautifully crafted and moving songs, and Joni Mitchell clearly marks the arrival of a major talent. No other singer-songwriter has been as influential or as adventurous over the course of her career than Joni Mitchell. Standout songs on Joni Mitchell include “I Had a King”, “Michael from Mountains”, “Marcie”, “Sisotowbell Lane”, “Song to a Seagull”, and “Cactus Tree”. Back to the botching: The label in question is Reprise Records that had been founded eight years earlier by Frank Sinatra. Reprise is affiliated with Warner Bros. Records, and that label had been founded 10 years earlier as a division of the major film studio Warner Bros. Since these are the albums that went through Hurricane Katrina, I only have the record labels to go by, and they just have Joni Mitchell’s name on them. Sometimes record labels are a little inconsistent with the other album packaging – for instance, the labels for the first album by the American band the Outsiders, Time Won’t Let Me (1966) also omit the name of the album. However, the intended album name Song to a Seagull doesn’t appear anywhere else either. Most remarkably, the cover art – painted by Joni Mitchell herself – shows the album title spelled out by birds in flight, but the original release of the album cuts off part of that image. The album producer is David Crosby, who was between bands at that point in time. Crosby had split from the Byrds in late 1967; and Crosby, Stills and Nash wouldn’t start to come together until the summer of 1968 – Joni Mitchell was released in March 1968 – although Stephen Stills appears as a “guest artist” on Joni Mitchell, contributing guitar and bass. In the recording studio, David Crosby had Joni Mitchell sing into a grand piano, where additional microphones had been set up, intending for her vocals to reverberate among the piano strings. Unfortunately, there was too much ambient noise and tape hiss that had to be removed, post-production, at the cost of the high frequencies in the audio range. In early July 2021, Rhino Entertainment – Rhino Records was once a beloved, mostly reissue record label that is now reduced to being the catalogue arm of Warner Music Group – released a box set called The Reprise Albums (1968-1971) that includes a new mix for Joni Mitchell a/k/a Song to a Seagull that was overseen by Joni Mitchell and mixer Matt Lee. As quoted on the Rhino Insider website, Joni Mitchell said of Joni Mitchell: “The original mix was atrocious. It sounded like it was recorded under a Jello bowl, so I fixed it!”