Court and Spark – Joni Mitchell
You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians
Peter Martin
4.8 • 838 Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With her 1974 masterpiece Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell transforms from folk singer into something harder to define.
Her piano playing matures. Her songwriting blossoms into one of the richest harmonic and melodic color palettes we've ever heard up to this point. Not to mention her incredible lyricism and melodies. And she brings a new production sensibility from her backing band: a group of jazz musicians called The LA Express.
In this episode of You'll Hear It, Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin break down Joni Mitchell's greatest artistic achievement (and her greatest commercial success) track-by-track. You'll never hear Court and Spark the same way again
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Blue: https://youtu.be/ly6ENKGV-S8
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About You'll Hear It:
In this popular music series, Adam and Peter break down the greatest albums of all time. Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Joni Mitchell, D'Angelo: Jazz is the foundation of the most GENIUS music in recent history. These seasoned jazz pianists bring their deep musical knowledge to every joyful episode to help you hear the hidden qualities that make music AMAZING. You'll never hear music the same way again.
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00:00 Court and Spark - Joni Mitchell
00:32 New From Open Studio
03:37 Joni's Sound Before Court and Spark
10:04 Joni Starts Hanging Out With Jazz Musicians
11:07 🎧 "Court and Spark" - Alluding To An Epic
15:25 Three Songwriters in One, At the Highest Level
15:57 🎧 "Help Me" - Joni DELIVERS
19:09 🎧 "Free Man In Paris"
22:02 🎧 "Midnite Flite" - Tom Scott and The LA Express
23:25 🎧 "People's Parties"
25:55 🎧 "The Same Situation"
28:05 Joni's Lyrical Prowess
31:38 🎧 "Car On A Hill"
34:31 🎧 "Down To You" - A Perfect Song
39:54 Joni's Vocal Instrument
42:17 🎧 "Just Like This Train" - A MASTERCLASS In Lydian Mode
45:32 🎧 "Raised on Robbery" - What Genre Is This?!
48:09 🎧 "Trouble Child"
49:52 🎧 "Twisted" - The Only Cover On the Album
53:55 Desert Island Tracks
55:42 Best Moments On Court and Spark
57:13 How Snobby Is This Album?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The |
| 0:07.0 | The I'm Adam Manus. |
| 0:31.3 | And I'm Peter Martin. |
| 0:32.2 | And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. |
| 0:34.0 | Music, Explored. |
| 0:35.3 | Brought to today by Open Studio. |
| 0:37.0 | Go to Open Studio. Justo.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Peter, we got a lot. Brought today by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio. |
| 0:37.8 | Just.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Peter, we got a lot of cool stuff going on at Open Studio right now. We've got new courses coming out from Larry Goldings. Daniel Anastasio, classical piano. Wait, say that again? Daniel Anastasio. I love the way you say that name. Classical piano. Classical. |
| 0:54.1 | And by the way, a brand new course |
| 0:55.5 | called Jazz Piano for the Bandstand |
| 0:57.3 | from you and from me. A collaborator affair, much as this podcast is. Very much like this podcast, except we're sitting in front of two beautiful grand piano. You just looked at them. I love that. I danced over to them because I love them. Anyway, go to open studio jazz.com. That's open studio jazz.com for, oh, your jazz lesson needs. |
| 1:13.6 | Peter, let's do this. I am buzzing today. You are. I am buzzing today. This is, not only is this one of my all-time favorite albums, I think this is one of the greatest albums of all time. I really think this is peak performance from one of our peak performers. |
| 1:28.1 | Joni Mitchell's 1974 masterpiece, Court and Spark. |
| 1:31.2 | To me, this is where I step into Joni fully. |
| 1:34.0 | I love folk music. |
| 1:35.3 | I love quite a few other people. |
| 1:37.2 | I love all of that stuff. |
| 1:38.5 | But to me, this is where I was like went from interested to obsessed with Joni Mitchell. I listened to the hell out of this |
| 1:47.5 | CD so much. I think I've bought three of these CDs in my lifetime because they kept getting |
| 1:51.5 | soda and coffee on them in my pickup trucks over the years when I was a kid. I love it so much. |
| 1:56.7 | Every song, musically, she goes to another level. But I also think, lyrically, this might be her most slept-on album because there's so many great stories, so many incredible lines in this album. I'm so geeked that we get to listen to this music today. Isn't it great? I love it as well. Isn't it great, though, when we have an album like this that you say that I bought it at least three coffee stains on it it's like a book yeah that you put notes in and that you savor and that if you lose like if you if you give it away to someone you almost want to because you want to go get another one yeah because you get to kind of discover it again yeah with that fresh copy I know now we've got Spotify and Apple Music. Isn't that fun? Whatever. |
| 2:34.7 | I mean, this will be with me for the rest of my life. |
... |
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