little bit country

Comments

I recently saw a Joni Mitchell CBC TV special on the Life and Times of Joni Mitchell.  The show summed up very nicely a recording career that has been prolific for 40 years and continues to grow as time goes on.  Her music has spanned and bridged categories, leaving her in the unrestricted artist category.  Unrestricted in the sense that her music over the years includes the categories of Folk, Rock, Pop, Jazz and Blues.  The only music category she hasn’t covered is country, but as in one of her songs, “You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio” she writes, “I’m a little bit country”.

Roberta Joan Anderson was born on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta. Her parents, Bill and Myrtle (Her father was a grocer, and her mother a schoolteacher), moved with their young daughter to North Battleford, Saskatchewan after the end of World War II.  When she was 9 years old, Joni and her family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the "city of bridges," which Joni has since referred to as her hometown. After high school, Joni enrolled in the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, for one year.  At the end of the year she said to her mother, 'I'm going to Toronto to be a folksinger,' and fulfilled her prophecy.

Joni joined a group of revered performers ranging from Frank Zappa to Leontyne Price, when she received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Special Merit Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artist significance to the field of recording.

She has truly become a legend in the world, and leads a group of internationally acclaimed female Canadian singers such as Celine Dion and Shania Twain.  She may not sell as many records as those two, but she really is a Canadian treasure.

She says she has resigned from making commercial records after tearing into the politics of the record industry and how it operates on the corporate level.  Let’s hope she changes her mind.  However, she always has painting, which has been another outlet for creativity.  Joni's painting, ‘Edmonton’ is a conversation piece for Tom Cruise in Cameron Crowe's hit movie Vanilla Sky.