Joni Mitchell - Live at the Second Fret 1966 (2014)

This outstanding recording preserves one of Jonis superb early North American gigs, a performance at the intimate Second Fret Club in Philadelphia, captured by the citys Temple University radio station, WRTI, in November 1966 and broadcast across the local area. She clearly enjoyed playing at the tiny club and returned there several times the following year for further performances. Despite the undeniably excellent quality of her writing, many of the songs performed were destined to remain unreleased on record for several years. Just four made it onto the eponymously entitled debut album (also known as Song to a Seagull) issued by Reprise Records; Marcie, Michael from Mountains, Song to a Seagull and Night in the City. Released just over a year later, Clouds is represented here by I Dont Know Where I Stand and the oft-covered Both Sides Now, a stunning composition destined to become a much-loved classic. Although dozens of artists have regularly covered Jonis material across the decades, one astute group who early-on drew heavily on her body of work when searching for material was Englands Fairport Convention. During the late 1960s they recorded their own versions of no less than five of the numbers performed here: Marcie, I Dont Know Where I Stand, Both Sides Now, Eastern Rain and Night in the City. Judy Collins was another regular champion of Jonis work in those early days, cutting her own versions of Both Sides Now (with which she had a 1968 hit single on both sides of the Atlantic), Michael from Mountains and Chelsea Morning. Both The Circle Game and Morning Morgantown were destined to remain unreleased as studio records for almost four years, until they appeared on 1970s Ladies of the Canyon. The set-opener meanwhile, Little Green, appeared, finally, on one of Jonis best-known albums, Blue, released in June 1971, and is particularly notable in that it was written about the daughter Joni had given up for adoption in 1965, and whose existence was not made public until 1993. Joni: I was dirt poor... I had to let her go. Urge For Going, written by Joni 1966 and a hit for both Tom Rush and George Hamilton IV, remained unreleased by its composer until 1972, when it appeared as the B side to You Turn Me On Im A Radio: its first inclusion on an album was not until the Hits compilation in 1996.