#1223: Carey by Joni Mitchell
Peak Month: September 1971
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #93
YouTube.com: “Carey”
Lyrics: “Carey”
Roberta Joan Anderson was born in 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta. Her father was a grocer and her mother a schoolteacher. After the end of World War II, her family moved to North Battleford, Saskatchewan. When she was 9 years old, Joni and her family moved 85 miles southeast to Saskatoon. She took piano lessons as a child. In her teenage years, since she couldn’t afford a guitar, Joni taught herself to play the baritone ukelele which she bought for $36. In her teens Anderson listened to rock-n-roll radio broadcasts out of Texas where the radio signals were especially strong at night. She played at parties and also hung out at a local coffeehouse in Saskatoon called the Louis Riel. She later learned the guitar. In 1964 she began her professional musical career by playing clubs and festivals around Canada. Her repertoire consisted mostly of standard folk songs, many recorded by her idol, Judy Collins, until she began writing her own songs, starting with “Day After Day”, which she wrote while on her way to the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1965.