It should be clear by now that while she started as a folksinger, Joni Mitchell had an affinity for jazz, from standards to fusion. She dabbled with these throughout her career, as evidenced by her experimental tunings and chords, and the caliber of musicians she used in the studio and on tour. After the Joni Mitchell Archive compiled four box sets of unreleased material (and three of remastered albums), the Joni’s Jazz box took a pretty bold approach by presenting four CDs’ worth of music that supposedly fit the thesis. Some of these tracks wouldn’t necessarily have been labeled as “jazz” in their original contexts; just having a saxophone doesn’t count as far as we’re concerned. Wayne Shorter does feature quite a bit; he’s shown on the cover, and the set is dedicated to him. Herbie Hancock is also on the cover, and two collaborations from his catalog are included: the Gershwins’ “The Man I Love”, and her own “Tea Leaf Prophecy”.
Beyond those, the set gets some rarities out of the way early on: a big-band version of Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” from the debut album by Clint Eastwood’s son Kyle, and demos of “Moon At The Window” and “Be Cool”. Near the end of the fourth disc is a lovely wordless demo of “Two Grey Rooms” that appeared in a box set of the Geffen albums in 2003. Beyond that, it’s a nearly five-hour trawl through the catalog. With seven tracks each from Turbulent Indigo, Taming The Tiger, and her orchestral covers album Both Sides Now, we wonder if a Reprise Albums box covering the ‘90s is moot and therefore not in the pipeline. Every now and then songs taken from an album are bunched together, but generally it seems all over the map, and random-sounding.
So we’re not sure of the intended audience for this set. While there is some undoubtedly masterful music here, just because it has a jazz influence doesn’t necessarily make it essential. It’s a Spotify playlist in a fancy physical format.
Joni Mitchell Joni’s Jazz (2025)—3
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