Joni Mitchell reached her commercial high point with Court and Spark, a remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz which stands as her best-selling work to date. While as unified and insightful as Blue, the album – a concept record exploring the roles of honesty and trust in relationships, romantic and otherwise – moves away from confessional songwriting into evocative character studies: the hit "Free Man in Paris," written about David Geffen, is a not-so-subtle dig at the machinations of the music industry, while "Raised on Robbery" offers an acutely funny look at the predatory environment of the singles bar scene. Much of Court and Spark is devoted to wary love songs: both the title cut and "Help Me," the record's most successful single, carefully measure the risks of romance, while "People's Parties" and "The Same Situation" are fraught with worry and self-doubt (standing in direct opposition to the music, which is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last).

For about a year after the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, it seemed as though everyone wanted to stage a rock festival. However, The Rolling Stones' disastrous Altamont free concert (documented in the film Gimme Shelter) forever tarnished the image of the rock festival in the U.S., while in Europe, the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was fortunately less deadly than Altamont, but nearly as controversial. Staged by two men with greater ambitions than practical experience (not unlike Woodstock), the festival was held on a small island off the British coast, where some of the finest rock talent of the day – Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Donovan, Jethro Tull, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and Kris Kristofferson, among many others – were scheduled to play over the course of five days.

~ Recorded at the Paris Theatre on October 29th, 1970 for BBC Radio 1's 'In Concert' series hosted by John Peel.

On 22nd June, 1971, Joni Mitchell released Blue, concluding her prolific four album run for Reprise Records with an album considered by many to be one of the greatest of all time. To celebrate the album's 50th anniversary, Rhino is releasing 'The Reprise Albums (1968-1971)', the next installment of the Joni Mitchell Archives series, featuring newly remastered versions of 'Blue' (1971) and the three albums that came before it: 'Song To A Seagull' (1968), 'Clouds' (1969), and 'Ladies of the Canyon' (1970).

Today, five previously unreleased demos and outtakes from the album are available as part of a digital EP called Blue 50 (Demos & Outtakes). These songs will also be included on Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971), a compilation coming out in October that will document the period leading up to Blue. Blue 50 (Demos & Outtakes) includes early demos of “A Case Of You” and “California,” an alternate version of “River” that features French horns, an early take of “Urge For Going,” a song that was intended for Blue but didn’t see a proper release until a 1996 greatest hits compilation, and a studio recording of “Hunter,” which Mitchell played live but never officially put out.

Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the night clubs of Toronto, Ontario. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", "The Circle Game") were covered by other folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968.

STUNNING BROADCAST RECORDING FROM JONI MITCHELL S BLUE TOUR Despite the success of her first three albums, in January 1970 Joni Mitchell decided to break from performing, and set off on a lengthy vacation around Europe. While on the island of Crete she wrote many of the songs that would appear on her fourth L.P., Blue. Critically and commercially successful on release, today Blue is generally regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time; Mitchell's songwriting and compositions are frequent areas of praise. In January 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of the 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music." Following the huge success and popularity of Blue, Mitchell went back out on tour where she presented new songs alongside many numbers from both Blue and from her earlier records - which would appear on her next album, her fifth, For the Roses. This L.P. was released in October 1972. But eight months earlier, Joni Mitchell performed at New York s prestigious Carnegie Hall where she put on a stunning show which indeed featured numbers from all of her records to date, and from the upcoming For The Roses. Previously unreleased, this superb concert was recorded for live FM Broadcast and it is this recording that is now featured on this new CD, making this essential period in Joni s career finally represented by a live album.

The 5-CD collection includes a 40-page booklet that features many unseen photos from Mitchell's personal collection as well as new liner notes featuring conversations between writer/filmmaker Cameron Crowe and Mitchell, who recently spent a couple of Sunday afternoons together discussing her archives. Crowe will continue to provide liners for future releases in the series.

After the expanded instrumental scale and sonic experimentation of Court & Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell reverses that flow for the more intimate, interior music on Hejira, which retracts the arranging style to focus on Mitchell's distinctive acoustic guitar and piano, and the brilliant, lyrical bass fantasias of fretless bass innovator Jaco Pastorius. Known for his furious, sometimes rococo figures beneath the music of Weather Report, Pastorius is tamed by Mitchell's cooler, more deliberate ballads: these meditations coax a far gentler, subdued lyricism from Pastorius, whose intricate bass counterpoints Mitchell's coolly elegant singing, especially on the sublime "Amelia," which transforms the mystery of Amelia Earheart into a parable of both feminism and romantic self-discovery. This isn't Mitchell at her most obviously ambitious, yet the depth of feeling, poetic reach, and musical confidence make this among the finest works in a very fine canon.

The Essential Jaco Pastorius is a 2CD compilation by the late American jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius. While the CD features material from the one album he did for Epic Records, it also focuses on tracks he did with or for other artists, including his time with Weather Report plus sessions with Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and Michel Colombier. This was put together by Epic Legacy.