Joni Mitchell - Urge for Going - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1966)

Joni Mitchell is another all-time musical great in my book. What's surprising is that I can make not just one but three 1960s albums of quality songs that had never been officially released in any form until decades later!

Mitchell started to "make it" in the music business in 1965, getting featured on national Canadian television. It quickly became clear that she was a phenomenon. In early 1966, George Hamilton IV had a hit with her song "Urge for Going." Then Judy Collins had a bigger hit with "Both Sides Now" in the same year.

Surely by 1967 Mitchell could have come out with her own album, if not back in 1966, but she held out so she could do it her way. Specifically, she wanted a solo acoustic approach, whereas the record companies wanted to give her a folk rock backing, since that was the popular trend at the time. It took David Crosby discovering her in a club and then championing her to people he knew in the industry to get her the sort of album production she wanted, in 1968.

The only problem with that was that by 1968 she was most interested in the songs she had recently written, and she permanently left all sorts of good songs behind. Happily, in 2020, the official box set "Archives, Volume 1" was released. It contained about 30 previously unreleased original songs, all of them from 1967 or earlier. Even after that release, the official website jonimitchell.com still lists 15 unreleased songs written by her, and about 11 of those date from 1967 or earlier. It seems that Mitchell considers these early songs as not up to her later standards, and has shown little to no interest in ever releasing them.

Thankfully, we now have that box set, plus some bootleg concert recordings in surprisingly high quality sound. As mentioned above, this is just the first of three stray tracks albums gathering songs from her early years that only came out on the box set or still remain unreleased.

The songs are in rough chronological order from their recording dates. Three of the songs are covers: "Ten Thousand Miles," "Seven Daffodils," and "Me and My Uncle." I didn't use the version of "Day after Day" because there's a still unreleased version that I think is better. It's a minute longer, with an extra verse, and it has a different guitar riff that I also think is better.

The song "Sad Winds Blowin'" comes from the box set, but I heavily edited it. Even though it was a recording she made for herself, she forgot some of the words. She sang a couple of lines of the second verse, forgot the rest, then tried it again and got it right the second time. I edited out the first failed attempt. For the third verse, she got through most of it but forgot the last line, then abruptly ended the song. I edited in a repeat of the last line from the first verse, then a repetition of the chorus. The switch in the lyrics doesn't make sense, but I figure it's better than having the song come to a sudden and premature end.

01 Urge for Going (Joni Mitchell)
02 Here Today and Gone Tomorrow (Joni Mitchell)
03 Ten Thousand Miles (Joni Mitchell)
04 Seven Daffodils (Joni Mitchell)
05 What Will You Give Me (Joni Mitchell)
06 Let It Be Me (Joni Mitchell)
07 The Student Song (Joni Mitchell)
08 Like the Lonely Swallow (Joni Mitchell)
09 Day after Day (Joni Mitchell)
10 Favorite Colour (Joni Mitchell)
11 Me and My Uncle (Joni Mitchell)
12 Sad Winds Blowin' [Edit] (Joni Mitchell)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15252845/JoniMchl_1965-1966_UrgforGoing_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I used the only color photo I could find of her that could possibly date from 1966 or thereabouts. Around her body, the background faded into white, but I made some changes in Photoshop to extend the details to the edges of the photo. Also, her eyes were looking to the side, but I also edited that so she looks at the camera.