Joni Mitchell may be Canadian, but that didn't stop PBS from claiming the singer-songwriter as part of its "American Masters" series. Airing tonight at 9, "Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind" is an unabashed paean to the aging icon who left rural Canada in the mid-1960s and became a sensation in the folk enclaves in Greenwich Village and Laurel Canyon.
Luckily, this documentary, written and directed by Susan Lacy, doesn't get too bogged down in nostalgia. Instead, it extricates Miss Mitchell from the folkie corner into which her post-counterculture critics tried to paint her.
"Sweet Joni from Saskatchewan," as Neil Young once called her, evolved from introverted coffeehouse poetess in the late '60s to the sophisticated urban lady of the '70s, a decade during which she dabbled in experimental jazz fusion with the likes of Charles Mingus and bass wizard Jaco Pastorius.
She may have suffered her share of heartbreaks along the way — giving up a daughter to foster care, missing Woodstock — but the fiercely independent Miss Mitchell broke some hearts, too, including that of fellow folkie Graham Nash.
Watching footage of Miss Mitchell from the '80s is painful: The jazz experiments sound dated, the hair and clothes are cringe-inducing — but everyone gets a pass for making it through that low, glitzy decade.
The Miss Mitchell of today is still truckin', as her California cohorts the Grateful Dead might have put it. The falsetto register is shot; the voice is now a smoky hush.
But those open-tuned "weird Joni chords" still sound haunting, even more so now that orchestras are getting hold of them. Nearing 60, Miss Mitchell is more comfortable singing with symphonic backing — yet another step beyond the airy acoustic ditties, such as "Big Yellow Taxi," that made her famous.
She paints pretty darn well, too, an activity she likens to artistic "crop rotation." From that perspective, it's easy to see why Miss Mitchell has always been so anxious to avoid being pigeonholed.
"I never want to become a human jukebox," she says.
WHAT: "Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind"
WHEN: Tonight at 9
WHERE: PBS
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