Black Crow This has always been one of my absolute favorites on the album and my favorite of the "little" songs (with the "big" songs being Amelia, Hejira, Song for Sharon and Refuge). This track has so much movement and propulsion to it and I absolutely love the contributions of both Jaco and Larry Carlton here. Carlton's lead guitar playing, in particular, is electric and wild--squealing in all the right places with atmosphere rush. It pairs perfectly with Joni's vocal performance and her own wordless wail. This song feels like the cousin of 'Coyote' to me--another song that really feels like we're moving down the highway at quite the clip, with a lot of rhythm in it. It is sequenced perfectly after Song for Sharon to lift things up and tug us back along. I'm also a big fan of the lyrics. The passage I quoted above is one of my favorite Joni Mitchell stanzas, actually. "In search of love and music my whole life has been." That sums me up pretty darn well! With the movement of the black crow (and Joni) diving diving diving diving for everything new and beautiful that catches her eye. I like the imagery of the crow here, and I've always liked how it pairs with the image of Joni ice-skating with her black clothes flapping all around her in the artwork (currently @Fortysomething is using that great image as his avatar!). Her restlessness and freedom are really captured in the lyrics and the music of 'Black Crow.' It's a pretty simple and straightforward piece, but that's what I like about it. It comes from the gut, this one, and hits directly. Sharp and quick, I love it.
Wonderful song. Joni's lyrics. The arrangement and Joni's vocal...compelling. A driving, driving driving rhythm that, "just like that black crow flying, diving", propels the music.
For some reason this track really resonates with me. This is an album highlight. Comparing herself to that black crow is an odd comparison for Joni to make, a rather unflattering one. "Diving down to pick up on every shiny thing" - the implication being that she has just wanted things for herself without ever giving back. I think she is being unfairly hard on herself here. Musically I think it's perfect the way the unsettled nature of the melody evokes the image of the bird's flight. This is not a serene "let the wind carry me" kind of flight, in the manner of the character of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. This is a restless kind of flight; the bird swoops, soars, circles around, then swoops again, always searching for things. Joni feels that she is sometimes like this too. Always on the move - but she seems to wonder whether all this travelling is actually getting her anywhere.
"Black Crow" can make my heart stop - metaphorically, of course. Here are three of my favoritest musicians in the universe just digging into a wicked groove. Larry is downright otherwordly here. And that metaphor about diving down to pick up on every shiny thing just crashes a giant internal gong in me. Also love how she lays out the complications of simply setting out from the Sunshine Coast. I hope someday to be on that ferry. I'll skip the pontoon plane, thanks much.
Black Crow is so unlike anything else we've heard from Joni up to this point, and different from the rest of the album, for sure. I think one of the great things about this song lyrically is that she's kind of repeating some earlier themes in Black Crow (traveling, hovering over her own life from a distance, struggling with the boundaries and cost of love) but it's done really subtly and to reinforce the tapestry of the story she's telling us....doesn't come across as obvious repetition. I've always loved this song. And after a few drinks I can be convinced to do my wicked imitation of the opening "Therrrree's a crow flying...." in falsetto.
Black Crow is one of my favorites of hers. I love how propulsive it is. Like the live version even better. Anyone else ever notice the music is quite similar to Whole Lotta Love?
I struggle to identify any similarity, I'm afraid, apart from the fact that they are both fast. If I try hard, I can maybe find some slight similarity to parts of The Immigrant Song - maybe. It's a stretch.
It's in the rhythm, especially at certain points in the bass-line. Like a sly glance at the LZ riff. I like this track a lot. Mitchell's rhythm guitar is terrific and I love the way it interacts with the bass--especially those bell-strike syncopated harmonic bursts. The lyric adds the idea of artist as scavenger to the album's meditations, and it's just nice to get something so breathless after all the stillness poised against motion (forward travel, backward-craning memory) we've had so far. This is just pure motion. And talk about percussive sound without conventional percussion! L.
“Black Crow” ... dark, intense, relentless. Great song. The rhythm she establishes with that formidable right hand of hers reminds me of “The Jungle Line”. I imagine frantic wings flapping. Jaco and the others must’ve dug playing it. What a groove. Lyrics are typical Joni, lots of allusions and double meanings. I’m guessing it was written chronologically backwards, the last verse actually being the first: I looked at the morning After being up all night I looked at my haggard face in the bathroom light I looked out the window And I saw that ragged soul take flight All that living on the road is exacting a toll, and she knows it.
Now to my mind, Black Crow is the track Crosby should have covered rather the piano version of Amelia. He was getting close to the feel of this with Games and also Whole Cloth from the first Crosby and Nash album. Pevar could totally rip this one.
back to musicians on Song for Sharon and the album as a whole Max Bennett enjoyed this session immensely He said Joni was very present and he said she was one of the most challenging, interesting and enjoyable experiences - this guy is a go to studio musicians cutting over 1,000 records over the years. I doubt this "he was discusted and never owned the album" comment. Max and Jaco were working on different songs - would have been brought in at different times - not unusual. The Jaco film is fabulous and his Joni contributions are well laid out It's on Netflixs but an expanded version with more extended interviews can be purchased on blu ray. Joni goes into seeing him years later on the street in NYC during his impoverished depression phase.
Black Crow I love the instrumental flourishes "flying in a blue sky" Larry screeches a little feedback sustain, Jaco hits a harmonic, some space Jaco hits another harmonic, Larry plays the progressing riff to the next verse and then as the song fades. The progression in transportation reminds me of traveling in the Canadian wilderness I took a ferry to the highway Then I drove to a pontoon plane I took a plane to a taxi And a taxi to a train I've been traveling so long How's I ever going to know my home Joni progresses from the wilderness metaphor back to civilization yet that crow persists ominous
Joni's essay on Jaco. Joni Mitchell Library - The Life and Death of Jaco Pastorius: Musician Magazine, December 1987
Listening today after reading comments, I am appreciating the performances and vocal more, but for whatever reason the minor key feel of "Black Crow" has just never grabbed me. Back in the 80s, when I copied my albums to cassette, all of Hejira wouldn't fit on one side of a 90 minute cassette, so "Black Crow" was the casualty. I added "Sweet Bird" at the end because the mood seemed to fit with Hejira. "Black Crow" is a good song, but my least favorite on the album.
I like “Black Crow” on Hejira but as an illustration of what the song is “trying to be” I prefer the version on Shadows and Light. Maybe that version would have been too high octane for an album as smokey as Hejira, which is I think more folk-jazz than jazz-rock. You could compare Sting's Bring On The Night live album, which also saw looser and more opened up performances.
I agree completely. Musically, it seems to be a bit drab, and the lyrics aren't quite as interesting as the rest of the album. I do like how the song captures a (terrifying) mood, though, and it works nicely in the context of side 2. Adding Sweet Bird to the tracklisting in its place sounds interesting; I'll have to give that a try (I couldn't put it at the end, though; Refuge Of The Roads is too perfect a closer for that!).
I just don't know how anyone writes a song like Black Crow. What makes her decide "I'm going to switch to this chord, I'm going to jump to that note"? If I thought of a note/chord progression like that, I would not be able to remember it long enough to write it down or record it.
I know what you mean. Her sense of melody is uncanny. She hears non-obvious harmonic relationships. If I had to guess, I imagine “Black Crow” started the way most of her guitar songs do, with a tuning that evoked a certain mood, then she probably worked out the basic riff, and then chords within that tuning to add the “colors” she wanted. It doesn’t hurt to have crazy good vocal range and pitch control. The series of notes she sings over “.. like that black cro-ooow flying” are positively haunting.
This doesn't bother me. In fact, I like it a lot. She is frustrated with her situation, her emotions, and her internal conflicts, but she just has to sit in it for the moment (and I guess the listener has to as well). Maybe that's why she is venting to Sharon. I like that someone, especially a woman raised with certain expectations of how she should live her life, can be 'shallow' in this way (I'd say selfish) and own it, and not come up with some morally good and admirable answer that makes everyone feel better. It's a little challenging and complex that way. And it is that self-possession that I really admire about this album.
When I was idling today I let the two riffs bounce around my brain pan and y'know what ... I can hear it. A decent guitarist - which I am not - could probably make a workable mash-up.
I have to admit how much I love these threads @Parachute Woman as I am learning so much. It humbles me. As I mentioned, Hejira is my favorite JM record & a healthy portion of that is because it reminds me so much of my home province of Saskatchewan. Geographically, I have had a close connection to Joni Mitchell's lyrics. Saskatchewan is very much like the Dakotas & Montana which it borders, for a US perspective of the people. I grew up a farm boy from a coal mining border crossing town just north of east Montana. There are numerous small towns like Maidstone, from "Song for Sharon" neighboring ghost towns like Baljennie in "Coyote" populated by working people in agriculture and mines. Saskatoon, where we both lived, is a pretty university city illustrated on the cover of For The Roses. Like Joni, wanted to travel, to seek cities and found solace in the highway. Yet, the prairie is always in the rear view mirror. That is what makes "Song for Sharon" so special to me.
Black Crow is just staggeringly great. Very reminiscent of Neil Young to me in terms of structure and (dark) character - though I believe he would have approached it much differently, at a slower tempo and less syncopated approach. But it is quintessentially Joni in the end. No other pop artist writes like this - the strumming pattern follows from the lyrics and the harmonic movement is akin to modal jazz (see below). The guitar work on this track is freaking brilliant. Incredible. Another masterpiece.
