I’ve been thinking these past few days about Court and Spark, the album that Joni Mitchell released in 1974. As always, you are probably wondering: what on earth does an old Joni Mitchell album have to do with Katherine and Raymond’s Manse in Queensborough, Ont.? Well, as always, I’ll tell you.
The regular soundtrack to life at the Manse back when I was a kid and young teenager growing up there was the transistor radio in the pantry tuned to CJBQ (Belleville and TRENton!!!!, as their jingle went), at 800 on your AM dial, then as now. And in those aforementioned early-teenage years of mine, the striking and intelligent songs of Joni Mitchell were as apt to waft over CJBQ’s airwaves as were less memorable (except they’re stuck in my memory forever) songs like King Fu Fighting and I Got You Babe and (oh, preserve us) the execrable Having My Baby.
My Court and Spark thoughts were triggered in part by hearing a couple of guitar chords when a song came on the radio (CBC 2) the other morning when Raymond and I were driving to work. Instantly I knew what it was. You know how the songs that were popular in your teenage years stick with you forever? A few bars later, when Joni started singing “Help me, I think I’m falling…” – well, I just sang along with her. And remembered singing along with that song back in the Manse kitchen way back in the middle of the 1970s, when Help Me was a hit single from Court and Spark. And it was a happy memory.
So that was one Court and Spark trigger. The other was watching an instalment of PBS’s American Masters series a week or so ago; the subject was record producer/movie mogul/utterly ballsy self-made man David Geffen. It was a fascinating program, and especially fun to watch because many of my musical heroes (who’d recorded on Geffen’s labels) were there to weigh in: Neil Young, Jackson Browne, the Eagles – and of course Joni.
And of course it was Joni who wrote a very famous song about David Geffen, called Free Man in Paris. That was another one that was on Court and Spark, and on the CJBQ playlist back in the old Manse days; I found it then, and still find it now, an incredibly catchy song – especially given the very complex lyrics. Call Me Maybe this is not, let’s put it that way.
Really, there’s something to be said for an era (the 1970s) when such intelligent songs were not only to be found on the AM radio, but were providing turns of phrase that became part of the popular vernacular. Like “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” from Joni’s huge hit Big Yellow Taxi (from the 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon, which is smashing). And that amazing chorus from Free Man in Paris, as she brilliantly and musically quotes (or paraphrases) David Geffen:
I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive,
Nobody was calling me up for favors
No one’s future to decide.
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song.
They just don’t make songs like that anymore. Here’s Joni singing it live; and here’s to the soundtrack of the Manse kitchen. Then as now.
Free Man clip w the one and only Jaco Pastorius on bass. Totally forgot he played w Joni. Just listen to what he does on the bass… absolutely unbelievable. What a sad story. Also unbelievable is that pant suit of Joni’s.
I’m ashamed to admit I had never heard of Jaco Pastorius, but have looked him up. A bass-playing genius, and yes, a sad ending to his story.
Oh the music. Thanks Katherine, for all the tunes playing in my head as I leave my laptop after the last check-in of the day.
You will appreciate this, Lindi: when I got up this morning I suddenly realized ( and informed Raymond) what this Manse needs: a radio! So we can once again listen to CJBQ, Belleville an Trenton – and especially Freddy Vette!
Ahh…CJBQ. We used to call it, totally politically incorrectly, even then, “CJBQueer”. Nevertheless, it had the finest radio continuing show of all-time, the “Milt Johnson call-in hour”. Could one find a finer radio personality than him? And, then there was the soft, velvetine voice of the newscaster Mary Thomas [she's still on the air]. And the farm report…and so on.
Yes, those were the days [does that phrase really mean anything?]. Now, who actually listens to AM radio?
Oh my goodness, Milt Johnston! That name takes me back. Is he still on the air? Meanwhile, in present times there is Freddy Vette (a Stirling boy), whom I have yet to hear but have read a lot about (notably in the feature about him in Country Roads magazine) and gather is much-loved. And do you remember long-ago evening DJ Joey Edwards? He was a Madoc boy (his mum or his dad or maybe both ran the Madoc post office, as I recall) and he was just great: played fantastic music, and provided hilarious commentary. He used to do a great George Harrison (or was it John Lennon?) imitation. And then one night he disappeared, and one heard that he’d moved to the radio station in Cobourg – which seemed impossibly far off in those days… What ever happened to Joey Edwards? Inquiring minds want to know!
His scintillating conversation and biting repartee kept all of us enthralled (so I say with dripping sarcasm…) Now, did Milt Johnson ever express an opinion of his own? Or did he carry the pose of being non-committal to the extreme?
Alas, I don’t know if he is on the air or even still alive.
Gracious, Graham, what do you really think about poor old Milt? And more to the point, do you have any idea whatever happened to Joey Edwards, my favourite deejay of the era?
In the early 90s when I was in Ottawa, I dropped the phrase “Joey Edwards mini concert” while babbling away to a co-worker who grew up in Sudbury. He did a double take and then asked how I could possibly know about that local Sudbury radio personality who he used to listen to when he was a kid.
I also remember Milt well. In particular I remember a PD day, when CJBQ did an on air reminder to tune in to Milt’s show because the “kids are off school today” “It’s going to be a good show”
Gotta love those CJBQ memories, Steve! Very interesting to learn that Joey Edwards went to Sudbury, presumably after his stint in Belleville. (As I recall he left CJBQ very suddenly. I had heard he’d gone to CHUC in Cobourg, but I don’t know if there was any truth to that.) If you look at the next comment that came in, you’ll see that you and I are not alone in wondering what ever became of Joey. He played great music and sure knew how to make us listeners laugh, didn’t he?
I was a good friend of Joey Edwards, back in the early 70′s. I’m trying to track him down. I have contacted CJBQ Management. They did a bit of research for me. None of their leads panned out. I know he had a sister. I met her at the family home in the Madoc area. I would really like to find him, and I know he would be excited if he knew that I was trying to find him. Does anybody know where he is?
Okay, I think we are officially on a mission: Find Joey Edwards! Do any readers of Meanwhile, at the Manse have any idea where our favourite long-ago CJBQ evening deejay might be now? I suppose he would have retired, and more’s the pity. Do you remember the Beatle imitation he used to do? I could never figure out which Beatle he was imitating (I think it might have been George), but it was hilarious! And does anyone besides me remember what the ditty was that he always signed off with?
My brother just told me about your blog and as I was reading over some of the earlier ones I see that you are a Joni Mitchell fan. I thought that you might like to know that she has a connection to Hastings County and not too far from Queensborough. I live at The Ridge, a small farming community near Coe Hill in North Hastings, just up Highway 62 from you. The farm that I live on was homesteaded by James and Maria Henderson in the 1860′s. They were Joni’s great grandparents, and their daughter born at The Ridge in 1887 was Joni’s grandmother Sadie (Henderson) McKee. Joni dedicated the album ‘Clouds’ to Sadie. She went to school at The Ridge schoolhouse and finally moved out west as a young women to housekeep for one of her brothers when a lot of the Hendersons left Hastings county to farm in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Joni’s parents Bill & Myrtle Anderson visited The Ridge In 1985.
I find your renovations very interesting as I am working on our 1904 farm house and 1860s original log home. We are facing many of the same problems and decisions, including storm windows and plaster walls (some even painted the same colour turquoise).
I am a retired musician (trombone player) and played at the Queensborough church with a brass quartet for the 100th anniversary service. Another funny coincidence is that for 19 weeks in the late 1980s I commuted every Saturday night at 11pm from Montreal to The Ridge and went back Monday mornings. I was playing for the musical ‘CATS’ at Theatre St. Denis and left after the Sat night performance and had to be back for the Monday night show. And every Sunday I spent the day putting glass in and painting storm windows. A local carpenter made up 13 frames, one for each window in the house, and I finished them up, one every week. And I made that drive from montreal during the winter at 55 mph in an old Land Rover.
Good luck with your continuing renovations.
(It is possible if your interior double hung windows open up fully to manipulate a storm window out from the inside and swing it up into place and hook it on the inside. It isn’t easy but saves going up a ladder.)
Ernie, I just have to say that you EASILY win the prize for Best Comment of the Day, if not of the Week or Month. Wow! Where to start? Thank you for sharing the Joni Mitchell connection, and especially your own stories of your renovation. I very much hope that one day Raymond and I might be able to visit and pick your brain about all the things you have learned about historic windows and so on and so on (because as we all know, with old houses it does go on and on and on.) It is also great to hear from someone up Coe Hill way, an area we are eager to explore. (We are overdue for a visit to the Old Hastings Mercantile at Ormsby, for one thing.) Here’s something interesting: in an odd way, we have already met! Because I was at the 100th-anniversary celebrations at St. Andrew’s, and Raymond saw Cats at Theatre St. Denis. So there you are: already we go way back!
Hi Katherine. As promised in my Facebook message just now, I am here just to point out the connection between my brother Ernie from the previous comment and myself and Ormsby. You may already know all this, but Ernie is the owner, host and head baker of The Old Ormsby Schoolhouse Tea Room. He opened it when we opened the Mercantile and we are very thankful for that! It makes for such a nice reason to make the trip to Ormsby, which being in the middle of not too much, is a requirement for just about all our visitors. And perhaps we have indeed already met, as I was playing french horn at that 100th Anniversary service at St. Andrew’s. If you have any recollection of identical twins there, that would be us!
Hello, Gary! What an honour to get a comment from the co-proprietor of the Old Hastings Mercantile! It’s taken a while, but I think I now have straight in my head the fact that you are Ernie are twin brothers, both musicians – and both deeply involved in “The Ormsby Project.” A great friend of mine from Queensborough, Elaine Kapusta, visited the Mercantile and the Schoolhouse yesterday and was blown away by it all. As everyone does, she told me: “You’ve GOT to visit!” Which we will do, as soon as we possibly can. So you and Ernie both played at St. Andrews’s 100th anniversary – that’s so cool! I have to admit I don’t remember (it’s getting to be a while ago now); where on earth was the camcorder when we needed it?