Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. While primarily known as a singer-songwriter, her mid-to-late-1970s work moved directly into jazz collaboration, beginning with 1976's Hejira, which featured bassist Jaco Pastorius; on the opening track, "Coyote," the recording is just a trio of Mitchell, Pastorius, and percussionist Bobbye Hall.

Mitchell's most significant jazz statement came through her relationship with bassist and composer Charles Mingus, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. In the last months of his life, Mingus called upon Mitchell to help set music to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a project that was ultimately scrapped but served as the catalyst for her 1979 album Mingus, on which she set words to new and existing Mingus compositions; Mingus died before the album was completed. For the sessions, Mitchell assembled an all-star jazz cast including Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, drummer Peter Erskine, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, and percussionist Don Alias. Her broader "Asylum Albums" period, 1976-1980, documents her sustained collaboration with these and other major jazz figures.

Mitchell's deliberate turn toward jazz composition and improvisation in the mid-to-late 1970s, culminating in her direct creative partnership with Charles Mingus in the final months of his life, produced one of the most significant collaborations between a singer-songwriter and the jazz world, assembling a genuine all-star jazz ensemble around her own musical voice.