Word: joni
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Clearly the pop world has come a long way since the Crew-Cuts first sang Sh-Boom. When Elvis Presley twitched at the head of a pack of oil-gun-groomed Teen Angels, white youth abandoned the syrupy somnolence of Joni James and Patti Page to share, at a safe distance, the black experience expressed in rhythm and blues. In the late '50s, the sullen sounds of American rock gave way to the urban folk madrigals of the Kingston Trio. They and their imitators were in turn swept from the popular field by those definitive merry mercenaries the Beatles...
...Roses--Joni Mitchell (Asylum), Usually a year's love affairs provide the material for any one Joni Mitchell album. Her most recent triumph is less obsessively introspective, more poetic, and more varied in tone. Unlike the upbeat but somewhat plodding piano style of other piano and guitar-playing folk-singers, Mitchell plays richly enough and sensitively enough to make an orchestra from one instrument. Her voice--which covers so broad a range expertly that it becomes another part of the orchestra--sounds more resonant on this album, but that may be the consequence of a new record company...
...Drag On--Chris Smither (Poppy). An artist like Chris Smither is less likely to scale Himalayan peaks than a joni Mitchell, but this album flies consistently at a remarkably high level. A folk singer whose music is closer to rock and blues than to the classics, Smither has a powerful voice with a controlled roughness. Don't It Drag On is a supremely economical album; each track is strong, the moods are well balanced from sedate to raucous, and Smither never stifles the impact of his or other people's songs with flabby arrangements or excessive lyrics...
James Taylor. Baby James has come quite a ways since that night at Sanders. Superstardom, its problems, liasons with Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, marriage, life of the West Coast, building a house on Martha's Vineyard, even a couple albums. It may be the flat Appalachian twang, or the dryness of his wit, but I think James Taylor sings his life better than Neil Young sings his. What it really is, is that he approaches, but never reaches, the bounds of insipidity...
Judy Collins. An interpreter. Or so I thought until she butchered "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," which I could forgive because I can take or leave Dylan, too. Then she butchered "Chelsa Morning," which told me that nobody should mean with Joni Michell's songs. She's a little more insipid then say. Jone Bess, but Who Knows Where the Time Goes is a near masterpiece all the way around, and "Pretty Polly" stones for "Tom Thumb" at least...