Raised on Robbery: Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark at 50

The Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll ranked Court and Spark as the #1 album of 1974, by a wide margin, and 50 years later, that still seems like a good choice. 

Mitchell was seven years into her recording career, and it was her sixth album. It was also the one she’d spent the most time making, pretty much all of 1973, and marked a stylistic change. The short story goes that this is her first jazz album, but aside from one exception discussed below, that’s a vast simplification/distortion based on how many of the musicians on it were jazz musicians.

Mitchell worked with them not to be jazzy but because their greater musical knowledge made it easier for her to get the sound she wanted, not least because her chord progressions were trickier than rock’s. She’d switched from rock musicians on the advice of drummer Russ Kunkel (as quoted in David Yaffe’s fine Joni bio Reckless Daughter). But she also happened to be dating drummer John Guerin, who was a member of jazzers L.A. Express—whose leader, multi-horn player Tom Scott, had overdubbed some horns on her previous album, For the Roses. So it wasn’t that much of a stretch to work with more members of that group, and then make them her tour band when she took Court and Spark on the road later that year (check out the resulting concert album Miles of Aisles). Also vital to Court and Spark were members of the Crusaders: keyboardist Joe Sample, guitarist Larry Carlton, bassist Wilton Felder.

Not that there weren’t non-jazzers on the album: The Band’s Robbie Robertson unleashes a fiery guitar solo on the first single, “Raised on Robbery,” and David Crosby and Graham Nash contribute some harmony vocals. The result was Mitchell’s most sophisticated, sonically lush, and varied album to that point, and her most popular as well.

The record’s biggest hit would be “Help Me,” released in March and reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Mitchell describes a relationship where both partners are not taking it seriously; she knows the man is not serious, but “we love our loving” although “not like we love our freedom.” Ah, the Seventies. (“Help Me” made enough of an impression on Prince that a decade later he quoted it in his song “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker.”) “Free Man in Paris,” a song inspired by a trip with her friend David Geffen, music mogul supreme (she was living in his mansion), was the third and last song from the album; it reached #22.

At the Grammy Awards, “Down to You” won Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s). It’s a good example of how this is not a jazz album: the arrangement, by Mitchell and L.A. Express leader Tom Scott, mostly stands out because of a long instrumental section that’s basically orchestral, mostly strings and Scott on unspecified double reeds (probably oboe, possibly also bassoon), with the only semi-improvised role of significance being Mitchell’s prominent piano parts. The sectional nature of the composition parallels the lyrics’ description of gradually coming to realize that a sexual encounter the previous evening was not love. Mitchell’s knack for highly personalized musings on her own experiences that are nonetheless very relatable shines once again. 

Most of the album is similarly ruminative, the exceptions being “Free Man in Paris,” “Raised on Robbery,” and “Twisted,” a cover of Annie Ross’s vocalese arrangement of Wardell Gray’s tenor sax solo on his tune of that title. Mitchell well knew how different it was from the rest of the album—its only true jazz performance—and dubbed it an encore. A humorous description of what nowadays would be considered neurodivergence, it ends the album on a humorous and upbeat note.

Mitchell would go on to move her music closer to actual jazz in the second half of the ’70s; here she’s more cautious but nonetheless in the middle of her creative peak.

AUDIO: Joni Mitchell “Help Me”

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Steve Holtje

Steve Holtje is a composer (classical and soundtrack) and improviser (keyboardist in the Caterpillar Quartet and This Humidity). His classical compositions have recently been performed by pianist Tania Stavreva and the Cheah-Chan Duo; one of his soundtracks can be found on Bandcamp.

His day job since 2013 has been running ESP-Disk, first under founder Bernard Stollman and, since Mr. Stollman's passing, doing his best to perpetuate and publicize the indiest indie label's unique legacy. He has produced albums by Matthew Shipp, Amina Baraka & The Red Microphone, Fay Victor, etc. Previously he worked at Black Saint Records, where he was present at the last studio session of Sun Ra. Other jobs have included editorial positions at Creem, The Big Takeover, and The New York Review of Records; inevitably, he also worked at a record store in Williamsburg (Sound Fix), where one night after closing, while drinking across the street at Mugs Ale House, he preached to some tourists about the greatness of jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley, which led to him reopening the store and selling them a copy of Harley's Re-Creation of the Gods. This is widely considered the most Holtje-esque occurrence ever.

(Photo by Dale Mincey)

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