In 1971, Joni Mitchell released "Blue," a collection of songs Rolling Stone magazine would later rank No. 30 among its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

That year, Carole King's "Tapestry," No. 36 on Rolling Stone's list, also came out, eventually spending 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and chalking up four Grammy Awards and more than 10 million U.S. sales.

And Carly Simon picked up the 1971 Best New Artist Grammy, before "You're So Vain" dropped in '72 and spawned one of rock and roll's great mysteries— who was she singing about? — on its way to ranking No. 82 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time list.

All of that, and the fact that all three women came into occasionally overlapping orbits around James Taylor — Mitchell as a lover, King as a collaborator, Simon as a wife — is covered in sweeping detail in the 2009 tome, "Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation."

Some of it is celebrated in "Girls Like Us," a cabaret-style show coming to Park Forest and the Freedom Hall Matinee Theatre series at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13. More info here.