Joni Mitchell: Blue CD Track Listing

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Joni Mitchell Blue (1971)
Blue (Rhino Replicas Edition)\n2007 Warner Bros./Rhino\n\nOriginally Released June 1971\nCD Edition Released 1988 ??\nGold CD Released March 16, 1999\nRemastered HDCD Edition Released March 2000\nRhino Replicas Mini LP CD Edition Released March 6, 2007\n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: Sad, spare, and beautiful, Blue is the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album. Forthright and poetic, Mitchell's songs are raw nerves, tales of love and loss (two words with relative meaning here) etched with stunning complexity; even tracks like "All I Want," "My Old Man," and "Carey" -- the brightest, most hopeful moments on the record -- are darkened by bittersweet moments of sorrow and loneliness. At the same time that songs like "Little Green" (about a child given up for adoption) and the title cut (a hymn to salvation supposedly penned for James Taylor) raise the stakes of confessional folk-pop to new levels of honesty and openness, Mitchell's music moves beyond the constraints of acoustic folk into more intricate and diverse territory, setting the stage for the experimentation of her later work. Unrivaled in its intensity and insight, Blue remains a watershed. -- Jason Ankeny\n\nAmazon.com essential recording\nJoni Mitchell would go on from this '71 recording to make more popular, more ambitious, and more challenging albums, but she's never made a better one. Working with minimal accompaniment (Stephen Stills and James Taylor are two of the four sidemen), the Canadian thrush summoned an involving song cycle of romance found and lost. Though Blue is an uncommonly intimate representation, it's also astonishingly open and gracious. Songs such as "All I Want," "Carey," "California," and "A Case of You" work equally well as poetry and pop music. --Steve Stolder \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nYes; It may be worth buying this high-end version of Blue, February 1, 2000 \nReviewer: ilikeamazon (see more about me) from Virginia, USA \nThis is not a review of Joni Mitchell's BLUE album, an acknowledged five-star-plus masterpiece. Rather, since I own three versions of this CD, including this expensive DCC version, I thought I'd write a helpful review for those considering this gold disk purchase. \n\nThe three versions of Blue I own are: 1) Reprise 2038-2, 2) Reprise 2038-2/HDCD 3) DCC GZS-1132 (gold disk). I played each CD back through a very expensive high-end stereo system. The digital front end included a dedicated transport and Audio Alchemy DTI PRO 32 in 20-bit mode and a AA DDE 3.0 D/A. The 20-bit enhancement was turned off during HDCD playback (which it has to be for HDCD to work).\n\nFirst, let me say that most normal human beings with average stereos will be perfectly happy with the generic BLUE disk. You can hear the famous sustain pedal lift on the song "Blue" better, in fact, on the Reprise non-HDCD version (maybe some compression?). The HDCD version sounds somewhat better (smoother). I was mainly listening to the quality of Joni's vocals during the listening sessions, however.\n\nThat said, the DCC gold CD produces superior vocals. Joni's vocals have a round, three dimensional "tubey" sound that floats in front of you and never sounds the least bit shrill (which the vocals on the Reprise non-HDCD do, but only in comparison). The vocals take on a beautiful luster. It's hard to describe why the DCC disk sounds better. The sound is more LP-like, without losing resolution or dynamics. \n\nIs is worth the extra money for the DCC version? If you have a high-end stereo and can appreciate the fine job that Steve Hoffman of DCC did on the remastering, then by all means: This is the only CD version you should own. Otherwise, the other CD versions should sound perfectly acceptable on less persnickety equipment. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nThe soul of an artist, May 8, 2000 \nReviewer: Donn Hart from Boston \nJoni Mitchell is one of the most daring, talented, and creative artists in music history, not just in folk, or pop, or jazz, or whatever she's being categorized as at the moment. Just listen to this album and you'll see what I mean.\n\nThough it doesn't say so in the booklet, Joni herself plays guitar, dulcimer, and piano. As a dulcimerist myself, I am absolutely in love with the dulcimer part on "A Case of You." That song is so simple, and it's purely beautiful. Stephen Stills' gently understated guitar part on the song adds a certain something, as does the barely-there percussion.\n\nLet's not leave out "All I Want," on which you can clearly see who influenced neo-folkie Jewel! Again, the dulcimer does it for me there! The same is true on "Carey." Joni plays some gorgeous piano parts on "River," "Blue," and "The Last Time I Saw Richard." That last song is beautiful (okay, I'm agreeing with almost every other reviewer here), I'm particularly drawn by the line "All dreamers pass this way someday/Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes."\n\nSo in short, do you want to hear a woman with true talent whose voice and music will be played for all time? Pick up "Blue." If not, go buy that new Britney Spears record. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nSongs are like tattoos, January 24, 2002 \nReviewer: Joshua Krist from Scottsdale, AZ USA \nLike another reviewer, I too was exposed to Mitchell through a VH-1 program. It sounds strange, but it really was musical love at first sight, and my appreciation has grown deeper in the almost two years since I bought it. \n\nSoon after buying this album, I spent a month on a boat in the middle of nowhere and every night after finishing the chores I would go sit on the deck and look up at the stars and listen to this album from beginning to end. It's something I would look forward to throughout the day, and I cannot think of a better album to go with such a special time in my life. \n\nEach song is a distillation of hard-won experience, and it amazes me that some years of living plus hours of writing plus weeks if not months of recording can equal something that still stands after all those hours are gone. \n\nDo yourself a favor, listen to this album. Maybe it will speak to you, maybe it won't. But if it does speak to you, I can guarantee you will be listening to it for years to come. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nIf I could rate it higher, I would..., January 12, 2002 \nReviewer: Brandon Moss from Westerville, OH United States \nNo album is more important to me than Joni Mitchell's 1971 masterpiece "Blue." As is rare with most albums, Joni has created each song to be a classic work of art in itself, telling stories that transcend generations of thought. I feel this to be Joni's most personal and reflective work. It has to be-- her lyrics and intricate melodies come across as though she is singing us a series of paintings about her life. These songs have to be real-- no one could even begin to imagine the senses she brings across on this album.\nMy personal favorites onthis album are the two songs that I consider to be her best songs ever. "A Case of You" is my very favorite song of hers. What can one say about it? It is sheer beauty listening to her heart spill out to this guy in the song. I also love "The Last Time I Saw Richard." Only Joni could take something that would just cross most people's minds as a mere thought and turn it into the most beautiful song.\nBut even though these are my two favorite songs, I believe every song is wonderful! "All I Want" is the Joni telling the world how much fun she is. (I wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive...) "My Old Man" is such a very personal expression of love at its rawest form. (We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true.) "Little Green" is perhaps Joni's most personal song ever, expressing her grief over giving up her daughter. (So you sign all the papers in the family name, you're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed.) "Carey" is a great song about love and sacrifice. (My fingernails are filthy, I've got beachtar on my feet, and I miss that clean white linen and that fancy French cologne...) "Blue" can take you absolutely anywhere you want it to, which makes it a great lonely night song! (Blue, there is a shell for you, Inside you'll hear a sigh, a foggy lullaby. There is your song from me.) "California" is my personal vote for Joni's most fun song, revealing change. (I'm gonna see the folks I dig, maybe I'll kiss a sunset pig.) My third favorite song on the album is "This Flight Tonight" about regret and love's confusing realm. (Up got the flaps, down go the wheels. I hope you got your heat turned on baby.) And finally, "River" is the best example of Joni's longing for better things in the world. (I wish I had a river I could skate away on...)\nI could go on and on about Joni's "Blue". Just get it and you'll understand why it is the most essential album in my collection and in my life. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nBlue. Beautiful., December 31, 2001 \nReviewer: alex ash from Seattle, WA United States \nOn a personal note, I was introduced to this album when I was nine years old, when it first came out. My sister Joanie listened to it all the time, and she became linked in my mind to the beauty of Joni Mitchell. After all, my sister had not only the same first name (albeit with different spelling), but she looked like Joni Mitchell at the time: skinny, long brown hair, dazzling smile. Sometimes what you love in life becomes greater when its image is reflected onto something else, and even after that, you find love in the reflection, as well as the image. As a result of this, it's thirty years later, and I've made sure to have a copy of this album wherever I've been in my life.\n\nThe beauty and richness of this album can't be compared. "Blue", which chronicles an actual relationship of Joni Mitchell's, could have been in fact written for any one of us who has fallen helplessly in love, had the daily struggles of a relationship, and ultimately have the relationship fail, leaving broken hearts in its wake. Love, dissapointment, heartbreak, and quiet resolution are all dealt with, and all of them with simple, poignant honesty. Aside from a few lyrics which are very much of the times of the late 60's and early 70's - in "California" for example, when she mentions kissing a "Sunset Pig" upon her return to L.A., and then later reflecting on "the war, and the bloody changes" - the material is quite timeless. After all, love and heartbreak don't exactly go out of style.\n\nEveryone has their favorites on this album (which is evident in the other reviews that you'll read besides mine) and I know I have favorites as well, but I'm really not able to choose one. I can tell you that I love "All I Want" right now in my life, because I'm in love and in that headspace. Yet "River" also appeals to me with its sweetness and despair. "Cary" has always had a special place for me, because my sister and I were living in the Canary Islands when she first bought this album, and that song has always reminded me of the little hole-in-the-wall cantinas there. \n\nI guess it's obvious from my review that "Blue" is more than a favorite album to me: it's deeply personal, interwoven in my own life and the lives of those nearest to me. But I'm not the only one who is affected by it this way, not by far, and I know I won't be the last. Listen. Just listen to it. You'll be so glad that you did. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nThe Apotheosis of Joni and the singer-songwriter movement, October 12, 2001 \nReviewer: scottanth from Blair, NE United States \nJoni Mitchell spent her first three albums earning a reputation as one of pop-rock-folk's best singers and songwriters. These literate and evocative works, delivered in Joni's ice-skate-blade soprano with bare-bones instrumentation, had made her audience think of her as a hippie-chick troubadour. Frequently, the albums revealed her struggles to find a man worth her while, or a love that could endure and survive.\n\nBlue was Joni's effort to kick against her hippie-queen persona. At first, it may not seem much different than the first three albums - spare arrangements, trebly singing, and tales of free-love struggle. However, Blue is set apart from all of Joni's previous and subsequent albums by a profoud depth and commitment of self to its writing and performance. She shows a willingness to show her true self to her audience in profound vulnerability, even unveiling the sad tale of giving up her infant daughter for adoption when abandoned by her husband in the four-year-old composition "Little Green." Her voice is miked very closely with a stark absence of echo which provides the illusion that she is singing here and now, in the same room with the listener. She sings with a passionate vocal limberness, often reminiscent of the blues and jazz greats. She's not really up to the same bag as an Ella, an Etta, a Billie, or a Sarah, but on this album at least, she is their peer in terms of what she IS doing. Some have objected to Joni's voice on her earlier work, but Blue shows that such complaints have about as much credibility in taste as those who claim to love literature, but Shakespeare "doesn't do much for them." In fact, it is the passion and resonance of Joni's singing that make her confession-box revelations ring true. \n\nWhile Ladies of the Canyon features what remain Joni's best arrangements on an album - cello and horns lushly punctuating the balance between Joni's piano and guitar - the arrangements on Blue rival them. Several of the songs luxuriate in Joni's magisterial piano alone - "The Last Time I Saw Richard" is nearly symphonic in its richness. Others enjoy the interplay between Joni and James Taylor's acoustic guitars and Sneaky Pete's pedal steel. All of these choices fit the intimacy of the songs perfectly. Blue's most striking arrangement choice, in the context of the earlier Ladies of the Canyon and the subsequent four albums, was the absence of horns. No wind instrument could possibly rival Joni's vocal work here. Like Billie's, Joni's gorgeous singing on Blue was not the result of studied precision and technique, but rather evidence of a great, profoundly spiritual soul within. Greater than nearly all of the rest of us.\n\nEven the much-needed leaven of the more upbeat songs on Blue - "Carey," "This Flight Tonight," "My Old Man" - have a wistful sense of the fleeting nature of bliss in love. The best songs, however, are downright heartbreaking, laments for lost or absent loves and expressions of sorrowful states. "Blue," "River," "A Case of You," and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" in their spine-tingling glory-in-sorrow all belong in any top ten list of Joni's best songs, but any attempt to remove any of these masterpieces from their context rings artificial. Any future Joni boxed set should include all ten songs - perhaps as a self-contained bonus disc to preserve the integrity of this shattering work of art. It says much for this masterpiece that Joni immediately embarked upon a expansion of musical and lyrical idiom on her next album, For the Roses. After Blue, Joni could only get bolder, more verbose, more oscure, more byzantine - but never better. She'd already done perfect. \n\nAmazon.com Cusomer Review\nSets the standard for singer-songwriter albums, July 16, 2001 \nReviewer: Tyler Smith from Denver, CO USA \nThis is "Blue"'s 30th year, and it's also been 30 years since I heard it. How have I held up? Well, the results are mixed. But "Blue" has held up just fine. In fact, if anything, it has gotten better since its long-ago release in 1971.\n\nIt's worth noting that I came to this album back then armed with complete skepticism. I was a devotee of the doomed rock bands of the day -- Hendrix Experience, Cream, the Doors -- and had begun to hook in to jazz, along with blues guys like B.B. King, Albert King, Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, etc. So I approached this album by a little blond girl (as I labeled her with all my worldly wisdom of the time) with her acoustic guitar and piano and high, clear voice with a sideways glance and a bit of a sneer.\n\nBoth of which were blown away after maybe two listenings. One of the great things about Joni's voice is that it is not only remarkably clear, but she uses it throughout the record in surprising ways. She has a jazz singer's sensibilities. Although "Blue" is not a jazz album, Joni bends notes, juggles rhythms and keeps you off balance throughout with unusual phrasings. \n\nAnd then there are the lyrics. One can read the many lyrics printed on albums then and now and find precious few that don't require the melody and musical crafting of the songwriter to lift them. Joni gives you plenty of melody and musical crafting, but the lyrics stand up by themselves. The best example of this is the wonderful "The Last Time I Saw Richard," a poem for doomed romanticism. It tells a complete story in poetic language. Playing it and listening to Mitchell's chilling voice tell the story completes the experience.\n\n"Blue" is best listened to from start to finish. Mitchell takes you on her journeys through the world and through her search for love and companionship, even as her artistic drive makes her a loner and a lover of the dark. Particularly strong, for me (aside from "Richard"), are "A Case of You," "California," "River," and "All I Want." But then I think about the life that bursts in "Carey," and the wonderful love song "My Old Man," and I realize picking favorites from "Blue" is probably a waste of time.\n\nSeldom has an artist put so personal a stamp on a work as Mitchell has on "Blue." Play it, savor it, and above all, save it, because I think there are few albums coming out today that will hold up as well as this one has after 30 years on the shelf. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nDeep Blue, April 18, 2001 \nReviewer: brunstv from Fort Collins, CO USA \nWhen I was of an age to know better but not to care (somewhere around tenth grade), Blue was a serious make-out album. At least, that's what they told me.\n\nFact is, when it was released in 1971 I was somewhere between public junior high in LA and uniformed regimen in southwest England, and it was only when I had braved a spell in Brussels and a quick trip back across the pond to Monterey in 1973, that I began hearing Joni again and not early Pink Floyd and Slade.\n\nIn the Forties, if you wanted to make an impression you whipped out a pack of gum (help me out here, someone); in the early Seventies, you played Blue.\n\nIn the early Eighties, you played Blue. And if you had any taste, you played it like it was 1999. Remember when they told you tennis strings were made out of cat gut? Don't know if they ever were or not, but Joni's guitar strings were made out of the gut of a lover, and if she didn't really bring out that guitar until after 1970, she played it on this album as though guitars were going out of style. Patch the speaker straight through to the EKG and I'll go easy. If I have a posthumous child, call her Little Green.\n\nOf the sextet of albums that truly enshrine Joni, fans are going to be divided. Some will like the pop orchestration of Court & Spark; others will insist on the homecoming of Clouds, and still others will love the virtuosic thin sound of For The Roses. Blue is not my favorite album (I fall into the small minority that cherish her first outing), but it's a mighty club to wield against the world. And, frankly if I were packing for a desert island, it'd be the first one in my tucker bag (see "Waltzing Matilda"). Why? There isn't a false note in any one of the ten songs. Most artists write a good song or two in a handful and build an album around it. This album wasn't built: it was delivered. Ask Nazereth, who recorded the hit "This Flight Tonight" to an incredulous but buying audience.\n\nRickie Lee Jones once dissed Joni because she didn't "grow up on the jazz side" of life. I love Rickie Lee Jones, but she missed the point. Joni didn't write jazz the way Duke Ellington didn't write jazz. She wrote music. You can play it any way you can play it, but you'll play it.\n\nIt has the foreground and the background; the leaf in your hand and the peak in the distance. And shy though she's reputed to be, this self-produced disc was miked straight to the heart. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nIgnore The Ego, Listen To The Record, August 28, 2000 \nReviewer: David Bradley from Sterling, VA USA \nIf you're like most anti-Joni's--a category I generally fall into--all you've heard is probably "Big Yellow Taxi" and her idiotic whining at the Isle of Mann festival in 1968 (or was it the Isle Of Wight?)(the Isle of Long?)...anyway, you've bought into the image of Joni Mitchell as an over-rated egotist, who bought a folk guitar, had a few minor hit singles, and dubbed herself the new Coltrane.\n\nWell, most of that is true. Mitchell has always been her biggest fan, considering even her most inane ramblings some kind of holy experience.\n\nBUT, if you can set aside the personality and the ego, there are some true classics in her set. BLUE is one of them.\n\nMitchell has spent the last twenty years trying to prove she's tough as nails, trying to take credit for everyone from Tom Waits to Jewel to even Dylan, so I imagine she'd hate to hear this...but her finest moments have always been when she lets down the butch facade and sings tender, almost girlish lyric--"A Case Of You" is heaven. BLUE is a near-perfect album.\n\nAnd, for those of you who still think Mitchell is only for women and wimps--why do you think Robert Plant wrote "Going To California?" The "girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair" was Joni Mitchell! \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nDefinitely one of her best--open, vulnerable, and brilliant, April 19, 2000 \nReviewer: A music fan from NYC \nI might listen to other Joni albums like "Hejira" or "Court and Spark" more often than this one but Joni is as great here as she's ever been. The songs are pure, confessional masterpieces with far less backing instrumentation than on some of her other records. As she has said herself, this album was exactly who she was and what she was going through at the time. It's sometimes joyful, often sad, but always insightful and beautiful. "The Last Time I Saw Richard", in particular, is one of the most heartbreaking songs I've ever heard with lyrics that stay with you forever: "The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68 and he told me/"All romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe"/"You laugh", he said, "you think you're immune"/"Go look at your eyes, they're full of moon"/"You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you all those pretty lies"/"When you gonna realize they're only pretty lies"/"Just pretty lies". \n\nHalf.com Album Credits\nJames Taylor, Contributing Artist\nStephen Stills, Contributing Artist\nHenry Lewey, Engineer\n\nAlbum Notes\nPersonnel: Joni Mitchell (vocals, guitar, piano); James Taylor (acoustic guitar); Stephen Stills (guitar, bass); Sneaky Pete (pedal steel guitar); Russ Kunkel (drums).\n\nRecorded at A&M Studios, Los Angeles, California.\n\nUltradiscs are mastered from the original master tapes using Mobile Fidelity's proprietary mastering technique, then plated with 24 karat gold and housed in a stress-resistant lift-lock jewel box.\n\nJoni Mitchell's fourth album maintained the confessional style of its predecessors, but her biographical epistles were here infused with greater maturity. Although her lyrics remained personal, Mitchell drew upon their described scenarios to express a greater context. Stephen Stills and James Taylor added sympathetic accompaniment, but the album's musical textures were defined by the singer's use of guitar, piano and dulcimer. Mitchell's vocals showed a new depth and range absent from earlier work, emphasizing Blue's important place in her maturation as an artist. She never returned to folk after this release, she spied a bigger world for her lyrics and eclectic ideas of song.\n\nNew Musical Express (10/02/1993)\nRanked #28 in NME's list of the Greatest Albums Of All Time.\n\nNew Musical Express (9/18/93, p.19) - Ranked #9 in NME's list of The Greatest Albums Of The '70s - ...Scrapings of the soul have rarely sounded so wretched...\n\nRolling Stone (8/5/71, p.43) - ...her songs, like James Taylor's, are only incidentally commercial: Her primary purpose is to create something meaningful out of the random moments of pain and pleasure in her life...\n\nRolling Stone (9/30/71, p.42) - ...She writes beautiful tunes coupled with beautiful lyrics...what more could be asked of her? BLUE is her best album by far...\n\nQ Magazine (07/01/1999)\nIncluded in Q's Best Chill-Out Albums of All Time - ...tangible warmth....A solitary album, which conversely makes the listner feel less alone...\n\nVibe (12/01/1999)\nIncluded in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century
This folk cd contains 10 tracks and runs 36min 15sec.
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