Word: joni
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time, Canada's Joni Mitchell had much the same problem. She ranked as one of the best young composers in the business, and her tender ballad, Both Sides Now, was successfully recorded by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Judy Collins. But she never recorded the song herself, even though she has a fluty, vanilla-fresh voice with a haunting, pastoral quality...
Today, though, she is beginning to catch on as a singer as well as a song-smith. Joni was the unquestioned hit of last January's Miami Pop Festival, and last weekend she started a concert tour that will take her to Boston, New York, Chicago, Ottawa and Montreal. At the end of April, she tapes a television show in Nashville with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. Her latest album has an advance sale of 100,000 copies, a month before its release. Furthermore, she has risen from obscure poverty to ownership of a music company valued...
...introduction I move to the delicious business of describing the Miami Pop Festival. Held for three days in late December in a gigantic race-track cum park just outside Miami the Festival unrolled smoothly. It represented in its music a cross-section of the entire rock scene today: folk (Joni Mitchell, Buffy Ste. Marie, etc.), blues (James Cotton, Butterfield), jazz (Charles Lloyd), rock, progressive rock, Motown (Marvin Gaye, Jr. Walker) and even top-40 rock (the Boxtops, the Turtles). All this in a setting of serene scenic beauty...
Performers were carefully scheduled on each stage so as not to overlap, by catering to people's different tastes (thus Steppenwolf on one stage while Joni Mitchell was playing at the other, Ian and Sylvia in the meadow while Iron Butterfly played the grandstand) though even with diligent shuttling from stage to stage I inevitably missed some performances. This kind of sensible planning on the part of the Festival organizers marked most aspects of the three day show. Facilities were thoughtfully and adequately provided: free parking, food stalls, seating, elaborate and powerful sound systems. Not to mention the whimsical diversions...
There were so many more, Steppenwolf and Jose Feliciano, Joni Mitchell's tart beauty, and the Charles Lloyd Quartet's tingling and dignified rhapsodies, but one special word about Procul Harum. They played two flawless sets on successive nights in front of the maedow. I remember them illuminated by the silvery-pink lights of the light show in the dark heat of the night crashing out their rapturous blend of music. Gary Brooker's expansively soulful singing, Robin Trower's eerie guitar, B. J. Wilson's deftly brilliant drumming, Fisher's streaking organ, and above it all the presence...