New Wax Wednesday

Joni knows jazz, and jazz knows Joni. To reinforce the point, Joni Mitchell is getting ready to release Joni’s Jazz, a massive 8LP passion project years in the making, via Rhino on September 5, 2025. It’s a career-spanning collection that features a wide range of recordings specifically chosen by Mitchell herself that reflect jazz’s profound influence on her music. After spinning it front to back already, thanks to having received an early copy of this endlessly fascinating collection late last week, I’d venture to say that Joni’s Jazz is, hands down, the most profoundly satisfying installment of her ongoing Joni Mitchell Archives (a.k.a. JMA) series.

More stats now. Amongst its 61 primo JM-curated tracks, Joni’s Jazz includes a wide swath of studio recordings, live performances, rare alternate takes, and material culled from over five decades of creative work and a smattering of different record labels. Among the aces-high selections here are two previously unreleased 1980 demos including “Be Cool – Demo” (LP1, Side 1, Track 4), which you can check out via its official YouTube clip below. (The finished version of “Be Cool” appears on Joni’s first LP on Geffen after her decade-plus stint on Reprise and Asylum, October 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast.)

Joni’s Jazz also features contributions from some of Mitchell’s most important jazz collaborators over the years — among them being saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Jaco Pastorius, keyboardist Herbie Hancock, and bassist Charles Mingus. Mitchell, who deems Shorter to be her favorite collaborator, also dedicated this box set to the man, following his passing in 2023. “It was a joy to play with him,” she notes of Shorter on a postcard-sized insert. “He will be missed, but he will remain alive for me in this music.” (And for us as well.)

Covering nearly every era of Mitchell’s recording career, the Joni’s Jazz collection includes selections from her still-stunning March 1968 debut LP on Reprise, Songs to a Seagull, November 1975’s masterfully titled Asylum effort The Hissing of Summer Lawns, November 1976’s Asylum travelogue Hejira, June 1979’s self-explanatory Asylum LP Mingus, October 1994’s anguish-laden Reprise offering Turbulent Indigo, and March 2000’s orchestrally sweeping Reprise release Both Sides Now amongst them. Also featured here are Joni’s guest appearances on projects like Herbie Hancock’s Grammy-winning September 2007 album on Verve, River: The Joni Letters. All throughout this riveting vinyl collection, the music follows Mitchell’s artistic growth — not purely chronologically, mind you, but more akin to an instinctually presented, vibe-centric setlist.

Examples of the artist’s jazz-inflected mastery include “Marcie” (LP2, Side 3, Track 3), from the aforementioned Seagull; the rhythmic layering of “Harry’s House / Centerpiece” (LP5, Side 9, Track 1) from Summer Lawns; the bold experimentation of “The Jungle Line” (LP2, Side 3, Track 4), also from Summer Lawns; the broad narrative scale evident on the full-sided, 16-plus minutes of “Paprika Plains” (LP5, Side 10, Track 1) from December 1977’s Reprise LP Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter; and the airy, improvised feel of “A Chair in the Sky” (LP7, Side 13, Track 3) from, of course, Mingus. The most recently recorded inclusion here is Joni’s performance of “Summertime” (LP8, Side 15, Track 4), which was recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival on July 22, 2023. That storied live event from two summers ago marked Mitchell’s first full-length concert in over two decades.

As an inveterate box set hoarder, er, listener and collector, I also really, really like how the overall aural etymological presentation of what tracks come from where, and when, has been laid out across the spread on pages 6 and 7 in the included full-size 8-page booklet. The liners in certain similar expansive/expensive collections can often make for an infuriating jigsaw puzzle when you’re trying to figure these kinds of details out without a slide rule, but the alphabetical, Battleship-like, line-’em-up shorthand for Joni’s Jazz was quite easy to follow — essentially an upgrade to how we’d read box scores across multiple columns in the newspaper back in the day, if you will — so kudos to the production team for doing it that way.

Each of the 8LPs in this collection comes in a well-designed outer jacket — with different Mitchell-painted artwork on the black-framed fronts, and tracklistings on the indigo-hued backs (albeit with each side number being spelled out there, rather than how they appear numerically on the respective indigo LP labels themselves). The discs are also housed in plastic-lined inner sleeves, always a plus. Even better, I had no playback issues whatsoever across all 16 of these well-centered, deep black LP sides. This is how you do box sets, folks.

My ratings for Joni’s Jazz are cumulative — 10 for the Music, and 9.5 for the Sound. (Without getting too far into the weeds about it, across these 61 tracks, the Music rated between 9 and 11, while the Sound ranged between 9 and 10, hence the averaging of both ratings.)

As for the cost involved, Joni’s Jazz sports an SRP of $199.99, and you can pre-order it from Music Direct here, and/or via the MD link graphic below that appears just before the tracklisting section below. I should add that the earlier noted liners also include rare and previously unseen photos, along with remembrances from the likes of Hancock and Shorter (seen above flanking Joni in the photo that’s centered on the box’s cover) and original artwork by Mitchell. If you’re a fan/admirer of her truly expressive artwork (as many of us are), an exclusive Joni Mitchell Archives fine-art print (8 x 8in) is available as a gift-with-purchase exclusive from joni.mitchell.com, while supplies last. (For my fellow completists out there, the companion Joni’s Jazz 4CD set is available in both Joni’s official store and on MD for $59.99 — and, yes, all the music therein will appear on all major streaming platforms as well.)

Incidentally, in the liner notes for October 2024’s Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol. 4: The Asylum Years (1976–1980) 4LP box set on Rhino, Mitchell made sure to point out that when “people ask me my favorite of my albums, it’s going to be Joni’s Jazz.” Now that she’s finally able to back up that claim on all these endlessly fascinating 8LPs, Joni’s Jazz just might become your favorite collection of hers too.

JONI MITCHELL
JONI’S JAZZ
8LP box set (Rhino)

LP1, Side 1
1. Blue
2. Trouble Man – Kyle Eastwood Feat. Joni Mitchell
3. Moon At The Window – Demo *
4. Be Cool – Demo *
5. Harlem In Havana

LP1, Side 2
1. Cherokee Louise
2. Come In From The Cold
3. In France They Kiss On Main Street
4. Nothing Can Be Done

LP2, Side 3
1. Sex Kills
2. Edith And The Kingpin
3. Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire
4. The Jungle Line

LP2, Side 4
1. Shades Of Scarlett Conquering
2. Yvette In English
3. Marcie
4. A Bird That Whistles

LP3, Side 5
1. Love
2. Comes Love
3. The Man I Love – Herbie Hancock Feat. Joni Mitchell

LP3, Side 6
1. At Last
2. You’re My Thrill
3. Sometimes I’m Happy
4. Stay In Touch

LP4, Side 7
1. The Crazy Cries Of Love
2. Face Lift
3. Sweet Sucker Dance – Early Alternate Version

LP4, Side 8
1. You Dream Flat Tires
2. Answer Me, My Love
3. Love Puts On A New Face
4. Both Sides Now

LP5, Side 9
1. Harry’s House / Centerpiece
2. Sunny Sunday
3. Last Chance Lost
4. Smokin’ (Empty, Try Another)
5. Hejira – Live At The Santa Barbara County Bowl (10/9/79)

LP5, Side 10
1. Paprika Plains

LP6, Side 11
1. Refuge Of The Roads
2. Blue Motel Room
3. Black Crow
4. Off Night Backstreet

LP6, Side 12
1. Just Like This Train
2. No Apologies
3. Not To Blame
4. The Magdalene Laundries

LP7, Side 13
1. The Sire Of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)
2. God Must Be A Boogie Man
3. A Chair In The Sky

LP7, Side 14
1. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat – Live At The Santa Barbara County Bowl (10/9/79)
2. Hana
3. The Tea Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms) – Herbie Hancock Feat. Joni Mitchell
4. Shine

LP8, Side 15
1. If I Had A Heart
2. Impossible Dreamer
3. One Week Last Summer
4. Summertime – Live At Newport Folk Festival (7/22/23)

LP8, Side 16
1. Stormy Weather
2. Two Grey Rooms – Demo
3. The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines
4. Twisted
5. If

* previously unreleased 1980 demo