Biography
Joni Mitchell (Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell) is a Canadian singer and songwriter of folk, rock and jazz music who continues to influence contemporary artists with her music and her lyrics. Born on November 7, 1943 in Fort McLeod, Canada, her father was an Air Force officer with Norwegian roots and her mother was a teacher of Scottish and Irish descent.
At the age of 9 she was diagnosed with polio, during her recovery, she began to sing for the patients and staff of the hospital. She learned to play the guitar and later attended art school and began playing folk music on the streets and bars of Toronto.
In February 1965 she had a daughter and married the American folk singer Chuck Mitchell who promised to help her raise the child that was not his, but the marriage quickly fell apart. Mitchell penniless and alone, gave her daughter for adoption, they met again in 1997. In 1967 she moved to New York and a year later to California, USA where she began to become known with appearances in folk music clubs and on television. In 1968 she released her first album entitled Joni Mitchell, and in 1971 she recorded her most successful album entitled Blue which reached 1 million sales and was selected by the New York Times as one of the 25 albums that marked a milestone in the music of the 20th century century.
In the 1980s, Mitchell toured Japan, Australia, Western Europe and the USA but her records lacked the commercial success of the previous decade. In recent years she has not given concerts, but has appeared occasionally at concerts of other musicians. She now divides her time between Los Angeles and British Columbia while she is simultaneously working on painting and photography.