{"id":866,"date":"2009-09-09T02:12:30","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T02:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni--the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html"},"modified":"2009-09-09T02:12:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T02:12:30","slug":"just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html","title":{"rendered":"Just Joni&#8211; The Genius of Joni Mitchell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word genius should not be thrown around lightly.&nbsp; But in the world of contemporary music, few artists qualify more than she does.&nbsp; Early Joni was folk, or folk tinged rock. Middle Joni was jazz rock, moving on into jazz itself.&nbsp; Later Joni was even show tunes and experimentation of various kinds.&nbsp; And she was equally good at all of it.&nbsp; She could write beautiful lyrics and tunes, play the piano or the guitar, and had an ethereal voice.&nbsp; I was privileged enough to see her at Dook at the peak of her early period just after the lp &#8216;Blue&#8217; (still to this day a classic) came out and she was absolutely mesmerizing. You could hear a pin drop in Cameron Indoor Stadium when she played some of these songs.&nbsp; Here is a nice sampling of some of the early songs in a nice BBC recording. She needs no augmentations, additions, enhancements, editing.  And for good measure I also give you one performance she did with my home boy James Taylor of Chapel Hill N.C. &nbsp; Enjoy&#8212; BW3 <\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word genius should not be thrown around lightly.&nbsp; But in the world of contemporary music, few artists qualify more than she does.&nbsp; Early Joni was folk, or folk tinged rock. Middle Joni was jazz rock, moving on into jazz itself.&nbsp; Later Joni was even show tunes and experimentation of various kinds.&nbsp; And she was&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Just Joni- The Genius of Joni Mitchell - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Just Joni- The Genius of Joni Mitchell - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The word genius should not be thrown around lightly.&nbsp; But in the world of contemporary music, few artists qualify more than she does.&nbsp; Early Joni was folk, or folk tinged rock. Middle Joni was jazz rock, moving on into jazz itself.&nbsp; Later Joni was even show tunes and experimentation of various kinds.&nbsp; And she was&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-09T02:12:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Just Joni- The Genius of Joni Mitchell - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Just Joni- The Genius of Joni Mitchell - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"The word genius should not be thrown around lightly.&nbsp; But in the world of contemporary music, few artists qualify more than she does.&nbsp; Early Joni was folk, or folk tinged rock. Middle Joni was jazz rock, moving on into jazz itself.&nbsp; Later Joni was even show tunes and experimentation of various kinds.&nbsp; And she was&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2009-09-09T02:12:30+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html","name":"Just Joni- The Genius of Joni Mitchell - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-09-09T02:12:30+00:00","dateModified":"2009-09-09T02:12:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/09\/just-joni-the-genius-of-joni-mitchell.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Just Joni&#8211; The Genius of Joni Mitchell"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}