(Guitar, vocals, b. 1943)

Fairport Convention were among several artists who had already covered her songs when this gifted Canadian soprano’s debut LP, Songs To A Seagull, appeared in 1968. A move to California coupled with relentless touring assisted the passage of the following year’s Clouds into the US Top 40. However, it was not until she caught the general tenor of the post-Woodstock era that Mitchell truly left the runway with 1970’s Ladies Of The Canyon and its spin-off hit single ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ – as well as a cover of its ‘Woodstock’ by Matthews’ Southern Comfort climbing to No. 1 in Britain. Blue and 1974’s Court And Spark – her first with all-amplified accompaniment – were particularly big sellers before a jazzier approach in the later 1970s was received less enthusiastically. Since then, artistic and commercial progress have been patchy and have involved ventures into other cultural areas – most conspicuously exhibitions of her paintings in the mid-1990s – and increasingly longer periods of vanishing from the public eye.

Styles & Forms | Sixties | Rock
Personalities | Moby Grape | Sixties | Rock