In “Fear of a Female Genius,” a recent essay on Joni Mitchell, Lind­say Zoladz explains why “one of the great­est liv­ing artists in pop­u­lar music still isn’t prop­er­ly rec­og­nized.” If you’re think­ing that has some­thing to do with gen­der bias, it does. But there’s so much more to Mitchell’s com­plex sto­ry. Those who ful­ly embrace her are an eclec­tic group with lean­ings, like Mitchell, toward folk, jazz, clas­si­cal, and instru­men­tal music world­wide: some­times all at once. Despite occa­sion­al breezy plain­spo­ken­ness, she nev­er makes for easy lis­ten­ing.

Her albums take us on wind­ing jour­neys through pecu­liar­ly evoca­tive lyri­cal tableaus, rich with unex­pect­ed, even jar­ring, images. Even the most acces­si­ble songs—for exam­ple, Court and Spark’s Burt Bacharach-like “Help Me”—spin like ver­ti­go-induc­ing roller coast­ers, lit­tle gyres pow­ered by bound­less cre­ative ener­gy. Her most pop­u­lar tunes glow with a world­ly-wise inten­si­ty all their own. Hear them all, from 1968’s Song to a Seag­ull to 2007’s Shine, in the 18-hour Spo­ti­fy playlist below. Or access it direct­ly here.

The idio­syn­crat­ic beau­ty of Mitchell’s music, woven from shim­mer­ing tonal pat­terns, shift­ing polyrhythms, and odd tim­ings and tun­ings, defies the labels we might apply. “I think when you lis­ten to Court and Spark,” says Bar­ney Hoskyns, edi­tor of a new anthol­o­gy of writ­ing about Mitchell, “you can’t real­ly sit there and say, ‘Well this is just pop music.’ You have to think of it on a lev­el with the great­est art that’s been done in the last hun­dred years.” If Bob Dylan “is sort of Shake­speare,” Hoskyns says, “then Joni Mitchell is Mil­ton… or Dante,” two writ­ers whose labyrinthine verse often pos­es sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for read­ers.

These kinds of “crass analo­gies,” as Hoskyns terms it, might seem off-putting and pre­ten­tious. But if it seems like Mitchell’s name appears more in the com­pa­ny of famous men than women, it’s an asso­ci­a­tion she made her­self.  “Most of my heroes are mon­sters, unfor­tu­nate­ly,” she has said, “and they are men.” Pablo Picas­so, Miles Davis, Charles Min­gus, whose sur­name Mitchell took for the title of her tenth album…. “This kind of male-hero wor­ship,” writes Zoladz, “has made Mitchell a dif­fi­cult fig­ure to some fem­i­nist crit­ics.”

Indeed, there is some­thing “inter­net-proof” about Mitchell—her “unruli­ness” and unwill­ing­ness to remain in one place, to play the roles assigned her, to adopt hip stances, pan­der, or deny her­self the free­dom to move in unfa­mil­iar artis­tic direc­tions, mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies and risk­ing mis­steps more cau­tious artists would avoid.

Chuck Mitchell, the estranged ex-hus­band and musi­cal part­ner who seemed to resent her incred­i­ble tal­ent, called her odd tun­ings “mys­ti­cal.” But she resists the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of her play­ing as strange. “How can there be weird chords?” she asks; “these chords that I heard inside that suit­ed me—they feel like my feel­ings.” As much as her work has emerged from her admi­ra­tion of male heroes and col­lab­o­ra­tors, it has also been defined by escape from the restric­tions men in her life might place on her, from Mitchell to Gra­ham Nash, whose mar­riage pro­pos­al she declined. “As much as I loved and cared for Gra­ham,” she remem­bered lat­er, “I just thought, I’m gonna end up like my grand­moth­er, kick­ing the door off the hinges, you know what I mean? It’s like, I bet­ter not.”

Albums like Heji­ra—her ver­sion of an Ara­bic word mean­ing some­thing like “jour­ney to a bet­ter place”—and The Hiss­ing of Sum­mer Lawns, with its night­mare vision of domes­tic­i­ty, doc­u­ment Mitchell’s release from the snares of mar­riage. But it has been dif­fi­cult for the 21st cen­tu­ry to come to terms with her for oth­er rea­sons. Her casu­al appro­pri­a­tion of cul­tur­al tropes and her deci­sion to appear in lit­er­al black­face, not only at a Hal­loween par­ty but on the cov­er of 1977’s Don Juan’s Reck­less Daugh­ter, have been called marks of poor taste, at best. Her albums became increas­ing­ly exper­i­men­tal in the late 70s, show­cas­ing a pas­tiche of influ­ences and guest musi­cians over­lay­ing her already unusu­al musi­cal­i­ty, and alien­at­ing many of her fans.

As she left behind the “con­fes­sion­al” voice of albums like 1971’s crit­i­cal­ly-vaunt­ed Blue and head­ed into weird­er ter­ri­to­ry, she lost lis­ten­ers and crit­ics, who sav­aged abstract projects like The Hiss­ing of Sum­mer Lawns, only to find, forty years lat­er, that these were essen­tial works of art pushed aside by the weight of expec­ta­tion. Mitchell had been push­ing against that weight her entire life. Like some oth­er unique­ly tal­ent­ed guitarists—Django Rein­hardt, Tony Iommi—her style devel­oped around a dis­abil­i­ty, in her case a left hand weak­ened by the polio she had as a child in Cana­da. “So she invent­ed her own way of play­ing,” writes Zoladz, and invent­ed her own way of being in the music busi­ness and the world at large. “For good and at times for ill, Joni Mitchell believes she is a genius.” Spend some time with her discog­ra­phy and you may find it hard to dis­agree with her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 150 Great­est Albums by Women: NPR Cre­ates a New Canon of Albums That Puts Women at the Cen­ter of Music His­to­ry

For Joni Mitchell’s 70th Birth­day, Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances of “Both Sides Now” & “The Cir­cle Game” (1968)

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

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Every­body gets the blues but not every­body gets the blues the same. Women get some seri­ous blues. Black women get some very seri­ous blues. Bessie Smith maybe had the most deep and soul­ful blues any­one ever had: “Crazy Blues,” “Down Heart­ed Blues,” “Care­less Love Blues,” “Emp­ty Bed Blues,” “Black Water Blues,” “Gulf Coast Blues,” and “St. Louis Blues,” which also hap­pens to be the title of her only known film appear­ance, as well as one of the ear­li­est talkies in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. (See a trans­port­ing acapel­la per­for­mance from the film above.)

Released in 1929, the “flawed, but absolute­ly essen­tial” film frames Smith’s char­ac­ter through the lyrics of com­pos­er W.C. Handy, wide­ly con­sid­ered the “father of the blues” for his pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the form. But Smith was more than an ancestor—she was roy­al­ty. The press in her day called her the “Empress of the Blues.”

Smith “comes off as a force of nature,” writes Mark Can­tor, “whose star­tling pow­er is rivaled in 1920s jazz and blues only by Louis Arm­strong.” Like Arm­strong, her influ­ence is incal­cu­la­ble. Sad­ly, the year she made her film appear­ance is also the year of her decline, when the Great Depres­sion hit her—and the record business—hard, and the very medi­um she helped launch, sound film, crip­pled the Vaude­ville venues that made her career.

Smith’s trag­ic end after a car acci­dent in 1937 was immor­tal­ized in Edward Albee’s 1959 The Death of Bessie Smith. Her voice lives on forever—in her record­ings and through singers from Bil­lie Hol­i­day to Janis Joplin—who paid for her grave­stone in 1970. (See Joplin’s phe­nom­e­nal “Ball and Chain,” from the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val, fur­ther up.) Bessie Smith may have been Empress, but anoth­er Smith needs men­tion as the Fore­moth­er.

Despite its ori­gins in South­ern Black life and cul­ture, until 1920, notes NPR, “no black singer had been record­ed doing a blues song.” That changed when Mamie Smith record­ed “Crazy Blues.” Like Bessie, she also appeared in a 1929 talk­ing film, Jail­house Blues. (See her above mime to the title song, about that age-old prob­lem, the “no good man.”)

A num­ber of female singers haven’t made it into the canon, itself large­ly produced—as crit­ics like Lisa Hix and Aman­da Petru­sich have shown—by the selec­tion bias of an insu­lar com­mu­ni­ty of col­lec­tors. But you can hear many incred­i­ble, less-famous women of the blues appear in the Spo­ti­fy playlist fur­ther up, in the com­pa­ny of more famous names like Bessie and Mamie Smith, Hol­i­day, Joplin, Mem­phis Min­nie, Ma Rainey, Etta James, and Dinah Wash­ing­ton. Blues hounds will like­ly rec­og­nize most, if not all, of these names. More casu­al fans will be in for a treat. (Note one mis­take: the artist Bum­ble Bee Slim was a man.)

Every­one should know Koko Tay­lor, whose fierce growls and howls set Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doo­dle” on fire fur­ther up in 1967 (with Lit­tle Wal­ter). And Etta James—whose “I’d Rather Go Blind,” above, gives me chills from start to finish—should have a con­stel­la­tion named after her, she’s so deserved­ly a star. We’re less like­ly to hear the name Vio­la McCoy these days (singing Bessie Smith’s “Back Water Blues,” below), whose style of blues sounds dat­ed but whose voice is as fresh as ever. Like­ly born Aman­da Brown, she sang under a hand­ful of alias­es in the 20s and 30s, none of them house­hold names.

Dozens more names appear on the playlist—Ida Cox, Alber­ta Hunter, (unfor­tu­nate­ly no Big Mama Thorn­ton or Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe)—all of them fab­u­lous in their own way. Giv­en this incred­i­bly rich tra­di­tion of female blues vocal­ists it should come as no sur­prise that women are cur­rent­ly keep­ing the blues alive, whether it’s the rock-soul revival­ism of the Alaba­ma Shakes’ Brit­tany Howard or the raw pow­er of Susan Tedeschi, whose “earthy, soul­ful belt­ing,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Richard Har­ring­ton, is rem­i­nis­cent of “Koko Tay­lor, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin,” who can all trace their musi­cal lin­eage direct­ly back to Bessie and Mamie Smith.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

Stream 35 Hours of Clas­sic Blues, Folk, & Blue­grass Record­ings from Smith­son­ian Folk­ways: 837 Tracks Fea­tur­ing Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie & More

The His­to­ry of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son (1928) to Joe Bona­mas­sa (2009)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness