Joni Mitchell - Girl from the North Country - On TV and Radio (1969-1970)

A few days ago, a box set of early Joni Mitchell rarities called "Archives, Volume 1" was released. It's really great. I think it's one of the best box sets in years. If you're a Joni Mitchell fan, you should definitely check it out. 

To celebrate that release, I want to post something by Mitchell. So here's the next in my "On TV and Radio" series. This is much like my BBC albums I've done for various musicians, except there isn't much from the BBC, so I've given it a different name. But the general idea is to scoop up all the TV and radio performances she did that have excellent sound quality. 

I've focused on rare songs and tried to avoid repeating the same song twice. All but three of the performances here are officially unreleased, although I hope that the next "Archives" volume will include some or all of these. The first three songs are from the Dick Cavett TV show. The next two songs are from the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1969, which was professionally filmed and turned into a documentary movie. That includes a rare cover of "Let's Get Together," in which she was backed by Crosby, Stills and Nash as well as John Sebastian. The next three songs are from the Johnny Cash Show. That includes "Girl from the North Country," a cover song duet she did with Johnny Cash.

The next song, "That Song about the Midway," comes from the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. All of Mitchell's performance has been released on DVD, but not on album. I've only included one song from it, as it was a song she rarely did at the time. 

The next song, "All I Want," is from an appearance on the BBC in September 1970. She did another appearance at the BBC just one month later. I've posted that entire show here. It's very interesting, because she and James Taylor played the show together. (They were in a relationship for part of that year.) The whole September 1970 BBC show is available in good sound, but again I only included one song because it was rare. This version of "All I Want" is interesting because she said it was unfinished, and the lyrics are significantly different than the final version released on album.

The last two songs come from a benefit concert that helped start the Greenpeace environmental group. "Bony Maroney" is a cover that was part of a medley, but I separated it from the medley. "Hunter (The Good Samaritan)" was a rare original at the time that didn't get officially released.

01 Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell)
02 talk (Joni Mitchell)
03 Willy (Joni Mitchell)
04 talk (Joni Mitchell)
05 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Joni Mitchell)
06 talk (Joni Mitchell)
07 Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)
08 Let's Get Together (Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash & John Sebastian)
09 Girl from the North Country (Joni Mitchell & Johnny Cash)
10 California (Joni Mitchell)
11 My Old Man (Joni Mitchell)
12 talk (Joni Mitchell)
13 That Song about the Midway (Joni Mitchell)
14 talk (Joni Mitchell)
15 All I Want (Joni Mitchell)
16 Bony Maroney (Joni Mitchell)
17 Hunter [The Good Samaritan] (Joni Mitchell)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256328/JoniMchl_1969-1970_GrlfromtheNrthCountry_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the duet she did with Johnny Cash that's included in the album. I took it from a screenshot of a video, and it's more blurry than I would like. If anyone has a better photo of them together, please let me know.