FROM COURT AND SPARK TO NIGHT RIDE HOME

Released 40 years ago this month, Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark was her first album in almost two years.

Mitchell infused her singer-songwriter folk-rock music with jazz inflections played by session musicians. The result was her most successful commercial effort ever. The album reached No. 2 in the United States in 1974 and eventually sold over 2 million copies. The recent WB 180 gram LP is a sublime reissue.

When David Geffen started his own self-titled record label in 1980, he took Mitchell from Asylum with him. Her last release on Geffen (sold to MCA) was 1991’s Night Ride Home. Even then, I thought it was her best record since 1976 (Hejira). Unfortunately, as of early 2008, its sales totaled only 250,000 copies. I’m lucky to have one of the few LPs pressed in that CD only era.

Night Ride Home is not one of her Grammy award winners. But it is a superb record, a return to her roots, full of feeling and imagery. It’s also completely unlike her mid-‘80s Dog Eat Dog, the brilliant if flawed release where she left her earlier influences behind and made good use of co-producer Thomas Dolby’s synthesized sounds to draw attention to social issues.

Stuck firmly in the ‘80s, all four of Joni’s Geffen albums, including the wonderful Wild Things Run Fast, are a bit quirky. Yet they complete the portrait of a true artist following her muse. Not for everyone perhaps, but they can make for great listening given the right mood.

(Covers: Joni Mitchell)