Hejira (album)
Encyclopedia : H : HE : HEJ : Hejira (album)
Hejira is a 1976 folk/rock/jazz album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. It features the single Coyote. The album title refers to a journey of religious or mystical experience, and the songs on the album were largely written by Mitchell on a trip by car from Maine back to Los Angeles, California. Prominent imagery includes highways, small towns and snow.
Many people consider this to be the third of Mitchell's three great albums, after Blue and Court and Spark. Dominated by Mitchell's guitar and Jaco Pastorius's distinctive fretless bass, it drew on a range of influences but was more cohesive and accessible than some of her later more jazz-oriented work. "Coyote", "Amelia" and "Hejira" all became concert staples shortly after Hejira's release, especially after being featured on the live album Shadows and Light alongside "Furry Sings The Blues" and "Black Crow".
Though "Coyote" and "Black Crow" are fast-strummed folksy numbers, the rest of Hejira is slow and often languid, notably the epic "Song for Sharon", which deals with the conflict a woman faces between freedom and marriage, while interspered with images of New York City. "Amelia" is about the famous aviator Amelia Earhart who died during a flight over the Pacific Ocean.
Commercially, the album did not do as well as its two predecessors, only reaching #13 on the Billboard Top 200 and failing to get significant airplay on commercial radio. Critically, the album was at the time not well received but has since been seen as the last great album Mitchell was ever to make. In 2000 German Spex magazine critics voted it the 55th greatest album of the 20th century, calling it "a self-confident, coolly elegant design".
David Sedaris named one of his stories after this record. In the story, Mr. Sedaris is thrown out of the house for what he thinks is drugs and too many Joni Mitchell albums.
Track listing
- "Coyote" (5:01)
- "Amelia" (6:01)
- "Furry Sings The Blues" (5:07)
- "A Strange Boy" (4:39)
- "Hejira" (6:42)
- "Song for Sharon" (8:40)
- "Black Crow" (4:22)
- "Blue Motel Room" (5:04)
- "Refuge of the Roads" (6:42)
See also
- Hijra (Hejira).
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.