Vintage Video of Joni Mitchell Performing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

I’m not sure if Tavis Smi­ley has his inter­view show on the net, but he has inter­viewed Joni twice in the last year or so. Won­der­ful jux­ta­po­si­tion if you can find it. Thanks for the research for this.

I remem­ber this show but not these per­for­mances. Is it me or does “Urge For Going” sound a bit like Gor­don Light­foot — espe­cial­ly the open­ing which reminds me of “The Last Time I Saw Her Face”? As for the trio that per­forms “Get Togeth­er” (lat­er a mas­sive hit for the Young­bloods), is this Three­’s a Crowd (Don­na Warn­er, Brent Tit­comb, & Trevor Veitch, lat­er to include David Wif­f­en, Ken Koblun, and Richard Pat­ter­son)? They lat­er record­ed a ver­sion of “(Let’s) Get Togeth­er” on their sole album Christo­pher’s Movie Mati­nee, pro­duced by Mama Cass, and fea­tur­ing four songs by Bruce Cock­burn and one by Mur­ray McLauch­lan.
Oscar Brand would lat­er record a series of albums for Audio Fideli­ty titled Bawdy Songs & Back­room Bal­lads, cul­mi­nat­ing in the album Brand X, in which he revealed that he had cen­sored his pre­vi­ous mate­r­i­al but was not going to do so with this album. The mate­r­i­al from that album is still sung by and fur­ther embell­ished by the Cana­di­an mil­i­tary, so I’m told. Teenage Head used to walk onstage to Brand’s ver­sion of “Sam Hall”.

I saw a Let’s Sing Out! show with the tar­ries at McMas­ter’s Down­stairs John.
I also saw Joni Ander­son with David Rea at the 1964 Mari­posa Folk Fes­ti­val in Maple Leaf Sta­di­um.
It’s great to see these old clips, but dis­ap­point­ing to see the oth­er per­form­ers cut out of it.

…way back in ancient his­to­ry, I went to Alber­ta Col­lege of Art in Cal­gary. Joni Ander­son was
a stu­dent in the Arts Divi­sion of the school at that time also. She used to give
mini singing noon hour concerts.….We KNEW at that time that we
we’re in the pres­ence of future greatness!!!…Wonderful spine tin­gling mem­o­ries
to be trea­sured for cer­tain!!!!

Great footage of Joni. Would like to know who the trio were. (about 30 mins in)

Wow… in the 60s and 70s, I appre­ci­at­ed Joni Mitchell from a dis­tance (not a great dis­tance, through one girl­friend in par­tic­u­lar (are you out there, Deb­bi?)); but I was more into the Grate­ful Dead. So you might imag­ine my eyes open­ing to see Joni in 1965 singing “Me and My Uncle” (at 12:08)– if ever there was an icon­ic rough cow­boy song, made even rougher by Bob Weir and the Dead some years lat­er… I’ll try to pay bet­ter atten­tion from now on.

Joni,unbelievable PERFECTION!

Every man in the place must have lust­ed for her. Every man & woman in the place must have lust­ed for her artistry!

@ Fred­er­ick Har­ri­son: Brent Tit­combe says of the 3some at .31 min: “That’s Robin Ward of the ‘Allen Ward Trio’…As an aside..when 3’s a Crowd did the Sing Out Show, the Trav­ellers were on the same show. The man­do cel­lo play­er Sid Dol­gay flipped out over us and called Bernie Fiedler of the Riverboat…Bernie hired us sight unseen and that’s how we end­ed up liv­ing in TO.”

Glad to see the Joni Anderson/Mitchell record­ings. But is there any chance of see­ing the begin­ning of the first show? The Chapin Fam­i­ly had a cou­ple of well known singers includ­ing one of my favorites — Har­ry Chapin. Who also wrote his own songs.

A Group called We Five, pro­duced by The Kingston Trio had a record­ing of Let’s Get Togeth­er, that lat­er became the huge hit by The Young­bloods. Odd­ly, my ex was in a group in the 70’s called Red Wilder Blue that had a ver­sion as well.

Dave VAN Ronk

This is like a time machine. It’s odd see­ing a per­former you first saw per­form when you were 19. (It was at a con­cert for New York City’s Schae­fer Music Fes­ti­val in Cen­tral Park, in 1967, when she opened for Judy Collins.) In 1965, the year of the clip, I was 17 and grad­u­at­ed high school. See­ing Joni when she–and I–were so young is like look­ing through the wrong end of a tele­scope; it also reveals what an endur­ing tal­ent she is.

Does any­one know who the bass play­er was?

Play this over a stereo via air­play, I can actu­al­ly hear what a bril­liant job he was doing.

So hap­py to see Tom Rush’s name brought up! Anoth­er gift­ed folk song­writer and singer. I fear too few remem­ber him.

Lau­rent­ian U was hap­py to wel­come Joni.

yes, I thought gor­don did this song and have been look­ing for days, but haven’t found it. It reminds me of him a lot.