Three Landmark Joni Albums – Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter

Wednesday 13th April

Joni seems to have been influenced by some of her lovers from David Crosby and Graham Nash through to Jaco Pastorius, bass player extraordinaire.  I nearly chose Hejira with such beautiful songs as Coyote (a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway) and Amelia (It was just a false alarm) which is fluid with Jaco’s bass riffs, but for me Don Juan just has the edge.  It is a double album for a start; Joni’s only double – and often double albums suffer from too many sides to fill but not with this superb collection.  We start with the teased out opening to Cotton Avenue leading into Talk to Me and Jericho, but then we have the magnificent side-long Paprika Plains where Joni’s seemingly random piano chords blossom into a full orchestra with wonderful striking moments.  This is possibly Joni’s most completely realized piece of music, simply breathtaking.  But we then have the lovely story of Otis and Marlena and the woozy drifting Dreamland (tar babies covered in baking flour, the cook’s got a Carnival song) and the simply amazing poetry of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (Puffed up and strutting when I think I win, Down and shaken when I lose, There are rivets up here in this eagle, There are box cars down there on your snake) and all to a driving strummed beat that takes you up and drops you down.  The final track is also glorious, The Silky Veils Of Ardour, she sings “Come all you fair and tender schoolgirls, Be careful now when you court young men, They are like the stars, On a summer morning, They sparkle up the night, And they’re gone again, Daybreak gone again” she seems to be both weary of love and it’s dangers and craving it at the same time, a truly beautiful song.

Joni had come an awfully long way from “I’ve looked at Clouds from both sides now”, she was on the edge of free-form jazz and was painting in sounds.  Where to next we thought.  She followed this superb album with maybe her most difficult record “Mingus” which she made with Charlie Mingus; I like some of it and I still listen but find myself lacking in understanding quite what she wanted to say.  Joni then met Larry Klein and again her music changed.  She returned to a more basic rock’n’roll style with “Wild Things Run Free” and the few records that followed.  Again like many artists the Eighties proved difficult, the space between albums lengthened but then in 2000 she released “Both Sides Now”, a collection of songs charting a love affair, many were standards with just two of her old songs in there.  Her voice never sounded better, deeper and more melancholy and the jazzy arrangements are superb.  She followed this with “Travelogue” my third landmark album…

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (International Release)