Joni Mitchell announced earlier this year that a book of her handwritten lyrics and watercolor paintings, originally handcrafted as a gift for a select group of friends in 1971, is being published for the first time. The title, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings, arrives October 22 via Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
In 1971, as her fourth studio album, Blue, continued to establish her as a singer-songwriter force, Mitchell crafted one hundred copies of Morning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for her closest friends. She hand-wrote a selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than 30 of her original paintings and watercolors. Hand-crafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen.
It’s available for pre-order here.
Now, as she recently celebrated her 75th birthday, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings is being made available to the public for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced facsimile edition, some of Mitchell’s best-loved lyrics and poems “spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color watercolor paintings depict a superb array of landscapes, still lifes, portraits of friends, self portraits, innovative abstractions, and more.”
All the paintings from the original book are included, along with several additional works that Mitchell had intended to include for her friends in 1971.
The refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Mitchell.
Mitchell turned 75 on November 7, 2018. A celebratory concert, featuring such friends as James Taylor, Graham Nash, Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson, was held in Los Angeles. The event was filmed and recorded for March 2019 release.
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