Little Green (song)
| "Little Green" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by Joni Mitchell from the album Blue | ||||
| Released | 1971 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 3:25 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Writer | Joni Mitchell | |||
| Producer | Joni Mitchell | |||
| Blue track listing | ||||
| ||||
"Little Green" is a song composed and performed by Joni Mitchell. It is the third track on her 1971 album Blue.
Mitchell wrote Little Green in 1967 about the daughter she had given up for adoption in 1965, when she was a poor folk singer in Toronto. The existence of her daughter, originally called Kelly Dale, was not publicly known until 1993, when a room-mate from Mitchell's art-school days in the 1960s sold the story of the adoption to a tabloid magazine.[1][2][3] Mitchell commented on the situation in an interview quoted in a 1998 article: "I was dirt poor. An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. It was difficult parting with the child, but I had to let her go."[4] Mitchell was reunited with her daughter, Kilauren Gibb, in 1997. [5]
The guitar tuning Mitchell uses on the song is Open G (low-to-high: D G D G B D).
Critical reaction
Writing for Rolling Stone in 1971, Timothy Crouse, said:
Several of the lesser cuts on Blue give every indication of having sat in Joni's trunk for some time. The folkie melody of "Little Green" recalls "I Don't Know Where I Stand" from her second album. The pretty, "poetic" lyric is dressed up in such cryptic references that it passeth all understanding.[6]
References
- ↑ Higgins, Bill (April 8, 1997). "Both sides at last". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 27, 2011.
- ↑ Pertman, Adam (March 16, 2011). Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming Our Families -- and America. Harvard Common Press. pp. 289–. ISBN 978-1-55832-716-0. Retrieved November 27, 2011.
- ↑ Dale Eisler. "Joni Mitchell's Secret". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 4, 2015.
- ↑ Posner, Michael (April 11, 1998). "Little Green a Little Blue". Toronto Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 27, 2011.
- ↑ Purvis, Andrew (June 24, 2001), "Joni, No Longer Blue", Time Magazine
- ↑ Crouse, Timothy (1971-08-05). "Joni Mitchell Blue Album Review". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 4, 2015.