Joni Mitchell - Court And Spark

Court And Spark is the sixth studio album by Canadian artist and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, originally released in January 1974 via Asylum Records.

Court And Spark was an immediate commercial and critical success, and remains her most successful album.

The album infuses her folk-rock style, which she developed throughout her previous five albums, with jazz inflections.

1973 was the first year since she began recording that Mitchell did not release a new album. Her previous offering, For the Roses, was released in November 1972 to critical and commercial success, and Mitchell decided to spend the whole of the next year writing and recording a new album that revealed her growing interest in new sounds—particularly jazz.

Mitchell spent most of 1973 in the recording studio creating Court and Spark. Mitchell and producer/engineer Henry Lewy called in a number of top L.A. musicians to perform on the album including members of The Jazz Crusaders, Tom Scott's L.A. Express, cameos from Robbie Robertson, David Crosby & Graham Nash and even a twist of comedy from Cheech & Chong.

In December, Asylum Records released a single, her first in over a year, "Raised on Robbery".  The single reached No. 65 on the US Billboard Singles Chart.

Court and Spark was released in January 1974.  Critics and the public enthusiastically embraced the album, and its success was reaffirmed when the follow-up single, "Help Me", was released in March.  It received heavy radio airplay and became Mitchell's first and only Top 10 single in the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the first week of June, and reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts.

Court and Spark went on to be a big seller that year, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard album charts and staying there for four weeks.

It also reached the Top 20 in the UK and was voted the best album of the year for 1974 in The Village Voice Jazz & Pop Critics Poll.

In 2012 it was listed at 113 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The album became the pinnacle of Mitchell's commercial success.

This album is a 2013 reissue on 180 gram black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve, pressed in Europe via Asylum Records.