| Don Juan's Reckless Daughter | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Joni Mitchell |
| Cover: | Joni DJRD.jpg |
| Caption: | Original cover used for all physical releases and streaming services on or before April 29, 2024. |
| Released: | December 13, 1977 |
| Recorded: | 1977 |
| Studio: |
|
| Genre: |
|
| Length: | 59:38 |
| Label: | Asylum |
| Producer: |
|
| Prev Title: | Hejira |
| Prev Year: | 1976 |
| Next Title: | Mingus |
| Next Year: | 1979 |
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is a 1977 double album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Her ninth album, it is unusual for its experimental style, expanding even further on the jazz-influenced sound of Mitchell's previous recordings. Mitchell has stated that, close to completing her contract with Asylum Records, she allowed this album to be looser than anything she had done previously.[7]
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter was released in December 1977 to mixed reviews. It reached No. 25 on the Billboard charts and attained gold record status within three months.
Much of the album is experimental: "Overture" is played with six simultaneous guitars, some in different tunings from others, with vocal echo effects; "The Tenth World" is an extended-length instrumental of Latin percussion; "Dreamland" features only percussion and voices (including that of Chaka Khan).
"Paprika Plains" is a 16-minute song played on improvised piano and arranged with a full orchestra; it takes up all of Side 2. In it, Mitchell narrates a first-person description of a late-night gathering in a bar frequented by Indigenous peoples of Canada, touching on themes of hopelessness and alcoholism. At one point in the narrative, the narrator leaves the setting to watch the rain and enters into a dreamstate, and the lyrics – printed in the liner notes but not sung – become a mixture of references to innocent childhood memories, a nuclear explosion and an expressionless tribe gazing upon the dreamer. The narrator returns inside after the rain passes. In speaking to Anthony Fawcett about working on "Paprika Plains", Mitchell said:
The Improvisational, the spontaneous aspect of this creative process – still as a poet – is to set words to the music, which is a hammer and chisel process. Sometimes it flows, but a lot of times it's blocked by concept. And if you're writing free consciousness – which I do once in a while just to remind myself that I can, you know, because I'm fitting little pieces of this puzzle together – the end result must flow as if it was spoken for the first time.[7]
"Off Night Backstreet" was released as a single backed with "Jericho", but did not chart.
Two of the album's songs had previously been released: "Jericho" by Mitchell on her 1974 live album Miles of Aisles and "Dreamland" by Roger McGuinn on his 1976 album Cardiff Rose.
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter featured contributions from prominent jazz musicians, including four members of Weather Report – Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Manolo Badrena, and Alex Acuña.
The original album jacket is a photomontage and includes three photographs of Mitchell. In the foreground she is in blackface as her "reputed alter ego, a black hipster named Art Nouveau".[8] [9] For her series of box set reissues of her catalogue, the cover artwork for the album was replaced with a stylised photograph of Mitchell with a dog's head and fur, which dates from the Dog Eat Dog album period around 1985.
Rolling Stone opined that "the best that can be said for Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is that it is an instructive failure," writing that "it's sapped of emotion and full of ideas that should have remained whims, melodies that should have been riffs, songs that should have been fragments."[10] The Globe and Mail concluded that "many of the novel sounds that marked her shift to the fully electric, pop-oriented sound have gone bland for lack of detailed attention."[11]
Musicians
Production
| Peak position | ||
| Australian Albums (Kent Music Report) | 39 | |
|---|---|---|
| US Cash Box Top 100 Albums[12] | 23 |