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JMDL Digest       Wednesday, December 4 2013       Volume 2013 : Number 1753



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TOPICS and authors in this Digest:
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  That thread about Paprika Plains  ["Jim L'Hommedieu" <jlhommedieu@insight.]

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Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 20:04:21 -0500
From: "Jim L'Hommedieu" <jlhommedieu@insight.rr.com>
Subject: That thread about Paprika Plains

In this post, Joni tells how Paprika Plains is central to meeting 
Charles Mingus.  Leonard Feather of down beat magazine interviewed Joni 
for the September 6, 1979 issue.  This is an excerpt of the interview.

Jim L'Hommedieu

- ------------------------------------------------
<down beat asked:  What in your work had attracted him to you and caused 
him to get in touch with you?>

<Joni said,
Somebody played him some of my records. Now, this is a story that came 
to me - there's a piece of music of mine called Paprika Plains which was 
done in sections. The middle of it is about seven minutes of 
improvisational playing, which I had somebody else orchestrate for me. 
And then stuck on to each end of it is a song that I wrote later around 
it. It was improvised off of a theme; then I abandoned the theme and 
just left the improvisational part which I cut together. It's a modern 
technological way of composing.

It was recorded in January, and the piano was tuned many, many times, so 
by August I when I played the verses, which were born much later, the 
piano had slightly changed. So when it was orchestrated, it's in tune 
for a while, but then it hits that splice where it goes from the January 
piano to the August piano. With a fine ear you notice. So somebody was 
playing this piece for Charles, and Charles is a stickler for true pitch 
and time, and he kept saying, "It's out of tune, it's out of tune." But 
when the piece was over he said that I had a lot of balls!

So something about it - whatever it was he didn't like, he also saw some 
strength and certainly an adventuresome spirit, because I'd been pushing 
the limits of what constitutes a song for years; I keep trying to expand 
it--- with an instrumental in the middle or with no known or prescribed 
length, but just as long as my own interest will hold out. And I presume 
that if it will hold my interest that long that it will at least hold 
the interest of a minority.

So, as near as I can tell, that was part of it, that he felt that I had 
a sense of adventure.>
- ------------------------------------------------
The whole interview is at:
http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=95&from=search


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End of JMDL Digest V2013 #1753
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