TWO SINGLE ACTS SURVIVE A MARRIAGE

A. L. McClain | February 6, 1966 | Detroit News (US)

In the spring of 1965, Joni met Detroit folk singer Chuck Mitchell at the Penny Farthing coffeehouse in Toronto. On June 19 they were married in the backyard of his parents' house in the Detroit suburb of Rochester, as a string quartet played. The couple moved into Chuck's apartment on the top floor of the Verona, a once grand nineteenth-century apartment building on the edge of Detroit's seedy Cass Corridor. The Verona was the "tenement castle" of Joni's song "I Had a King," and Chuck, of course, the king who "carried me off to his country for marriage too soon" (and changed the locks on her later).

In between gigs at Detroit folk clubs including the Chess Mate and the Raven Gallery, Joni sewed curtains and transformed their lair into a medieval green and gold–hued fantasyland. The couple put up visiting musician friends such as Tom Rush, Gordon Lightfoot, and Eric Andersen in their spacious pad. Hosting Andersen was fortuitous; he showed Joni some open tunings on the guitar, which led her music in a new direction. Joni had already written four or five songs before she met Chuck, but it was at the Verona, where she lived with him from 1965 through 1967, that she wrote some of her best-known early compositions, including "Circle Game" and "Both Sides, Now."

There is even a Motown connection. Chuck said he sought out someone to write lead sheets for Joni's songs, and he found a musician he describes as a lean six footer, "definitely from Motown, African American, fortysomething, a reed man," which fits the description of flutist/saxophonist (and, for a time, Motown bandleader) Thomas "Beans" Bowles. The "reed man" trudged up the many stairs to their bohemian pad, Chuck remembered, but was skeptical of Joni's unusual tunings until he watched her hands on the guitar and found himself caught up in the melodies. — Ed.

In this era of computers serving as matchmakers, it seems unlikely that Chuck and Joni Mitchell would have been paired off as matrimonial partners.

But seven months after their marriage, they seemed to have beaten the machines.

Their wedding required more sacrifice than the average couple's. Each was a folk singer. Chuck had played numerous engagements as a single in the Detroit area; Joni filled dates in her native Canada as a soloist.

They decided to combine single acts into one, and the honeymoon took a slight detour. Chuck explained it, "We are both strong-minded people, and we both had our own ways of doing a number. There were some hectic times until we blended our styles."

Joni's disposition also suffered when he took her home to his apartment in the Wayne State University area. They had to climb five flights of stairs, and he was too exhausted to carry her across the threshold. Joni walked in herself.

"But I carried her the last flight of stairs," laughed Chuck.

Chuck grew up in the Rochester area. Joni was used to Canadian customs. She had wanted to be an artist and had gone to school to study art.

The girl who bears a striking resemblance to Mia Farrow, of TV's "Peyton Place," explained it:

"I got interested in a ukulele, and from there I turned to the guitar and folk singing. Thirty-six hours after I met Chuck, he asked me to marry him. But we waited two months."

Now their marriage and careers are on firmer ground. They recently finished an engagement together at the Chess Mate, and hope to get a tryout at the Playboy Club in Detroit.

Occasionally, they break up the act for separate engagements. This weekend, Joni backed up blues singer Jesse Fuller at the Chess Mate and Chuck sang at the Alcove on Woodward.

On Feb. 15 they join forces again for a week's stand at the Chess Mate, and on Feb. 22 they appear together at the Living End, a nightclub.

Chuck said, "Joni and I have developed our act. We are not just folk singers now. We do comedy, sing some ragtime and do folk-rock. We're ready for the big clubs now."

Joni nodded her approval, as any dutiful wife would do.

URBANITY REVISITED: MODE IS MOD FOR CITY LIVING

Jo Ann Mercer | March 20, 1966 | Detroit News (US)

This follow-up Detroit News story puts the Mitchells on display as the bright young things of the time, living in an edgy neighborhood in the Cass Corridor and evincing boho chic before it was a thing. It's also instructive to see how women artists were portrayed in 1966 — creative, but mostly within the confines of domesticity, expected to be quiet and...