Joni Mitchell Trivia
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49 free Joni Mitchell trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Joni Mitchell trivia for Blue devotees, guitar geeks and anyone who came to her through Brandi Carlile's Joni Jams. The quiz begins on the prairies: born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, polio at nine, a ukulele because her mother thought guitars were hillbilly, a Pete Seeger songbook, and the open tunings she devised to spare a weakened left hand. From there it follows the coffee-house years in Calgary, Toronto and Detroit, the daughter placed for adoption, the marriage to Chuck Mitchell, and the night David Crosby walked into a Florida club. Then come the records: Song to a Seagull, Clouds and the first Grammy, Ladies of the Canyon going gold, Blue, For the Roses, Court and Spark and her only top-ten single, the jazz turn with the L.A. Express, Jaco Pastorius, Hejira and Charles Mingus, the Geffen years with Thomas Dolby, Turbulent Indigo's comeback, and the last album of new songs in 2007. Later rounds cover the 1,200 covers of Both Sides Now, the Rock Hall induction she skipped, the aneurysm and recovery, the surprise Newport set in 2022, the Gorge and Hollywood Bowl shows, and the biopic in the works. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Bob Dylan, Neil Young, 1970s music and singer-songwriter quizzes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Joni Mitchell's name at birth?
Roberta Joan Anderson
Roberta Joan Anderson became Joni Mitchell in 1965, when she married the folk singer Chuck Mitchell; she kept his surname after the marriage ended two years later.
Q 02In which Canadian province was Mitchell born?
Alberta
Alberta was a wartime posting: her father, an air force flight lieutenant, was teaching new pilots at Fort Macleod when she was born there in 1943.
Q 03Which city does Mitchell consider her hometown, having moved there at age 11?
Saskatoon
Saskatoon is where a seventh-grade teacher told her that if she could paint with a brush she could paint with words; she dedicated her first album to him.
Q 04Which illness did Mitchell contract at the age of nine?
Polio
Polio put her in hospital at nine and weakened her left hand, which is why she later devised her own guitar tunings to compensate.
Q 05Which instrument did Mitchell settle for first because her mother thought guitars were 'hillbilly'?
Ukulele
The ukulele was what she bought when her mother banned the guitar; she played it at parties where friends sang Kingston Trio songs, then taught herself guitar from Pete Seeger's lessons.
Q 06Which vocal jazz group's album did Mitchell call 'my Beatles'?
Lambert, Hendricks and Ross
Lambert, Hendricks and Ross's The Hottest New Group in Jazz was so hard to find in Canada that she paid a bootleg price for it; she later recorded two of its songs, Twisted and Centerpiece.
Q 07Mitchell dropped out of which art school in 1964 after a year?
The Alberta College of Art in Calgary
The Alberta College of Art in Calgary lost her after a single year: she left at 20, newly pregnant, telling her mother she was off to be a folk singer.
Q 08Mitchell wrote her first song, 'Day After Day', during what journey?
A three-day train ride to Toronto
A three-day train ride to Toronto, taken to hear Buffy Sainte-Marie at a folk festival, gave her the song; she stayed in the city and never went back to art school.
Q 09Why did Mitchell resolve to write her own material early in her folk-club career?
Veterans claimed the traditional songs
Veterans claimed the traditional songs: each city's folk scene gave established singers sole right to their signature numbers, so whenever she named one she was told 'You can't sing that. That's my song.'
Q 10What name was Mitchell's daughter given after adoption?
Kilauren Gibb
Kilauren Gibb was adopted at six months by two teachers; Mitchell had hidden her story in the song Little Green, and mother and daughter finally met in 1997.
Q 11In which US city did Joni and Chuck Mitchell live and play coffee houses in the mid-1960s?
Detroit
Detroit was Chuck Mitchell's base, and he took her there in 1965; when the marriage ended in 1967 she left for New York and a solo career.
Q 12Which musician saw Joni Mitchell in a Coconut Grove club in 1967 and took her to Los Angeles?
David Crosby
David Crosby, newly out of the Byrds and in Florida to buy a sailboat, went on to produce her first album, using his name to stop her songs being dressed up as folk-rock.
Q 13Which label released Mitchell's 1968 debut, Song to a Seagull?
Reprise
Reprise signed her in 1967 through talent scout Andy Wickham and issued her first four albums; in 2021 she remixed the debut, saying the original sounded as if recorded under a Jello bowl.
Q 21Which song is Mitchell's only US top-ten single?
Help Me
Help Me earned a nod from Prince, who counted Mitchell among his favourite artists: his 1987 song The Ballad of Dorothy Parker has a lyric about hearing Joni sing it.
Q 22Which jazz-fusion band did Mitchell call her first real backing group?
The L.A. Express
The L.A. Express won her over at a Los Angeles jazz club, the Baked Potato; she took them on the road in 1974, and the tour's double live album, Miles of Aisles, reached No. 2.
Q 23On which 1975 track did Mitchell make an early attempt at sampling African musicians?
The Jungle Line
Q 14Whose 1967 recording of 'Both Sides Now' became a top-ten hit before Mitchell released her own version?
Judy Collins
Judy Collins's single made the song famous before its writer had it on a record; Mitchell began it on a plane, reading Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, when she looked out of the window as his hero does.
Q 15Which 1969 album brought Mitchell her first Grammy, for Best Folk Performance?
Clouds
Clouds has her own painted self-portrait on its sleeve, and it gave her own versions of Both Sides, Now and Chelsea Morning, songs other singers had recorded first.
Q 16Which 1970 album holds both 'The Circle Game' and Mitchell's own version of 'Woodstock'?
Ladies of the Canyon
Ladies of the Canyon is named for Laurel Canyon, the Los Angeles hillside where she lived while writing it; its title song sketches three real women she knew there.
Q 17On what instrument did Mitchell perform her own version of 'Woodstock'?
Wurlitzer electric piano
A Wurlitzer electric piano and her own overdubbed voices are all she used on her slow version; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young turned the same song into a fast rock hit.
Q 18Which Mitchell album did Rolling Stone rank third on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time?
Blue
Blue grew out of a break-up: as her romance with Graham Nash came to an end she travelled through Europe, writing some of the album's songs along the way.
Q 19Which track was released as the first single from Blue?
Carey
Carey began on Crete as a birthday present for Cary Raditz, an American cook she met among the hippies living in the caves at Matala; it came out as a single in the summer of 1971.
Q 20Which 1974 album became Mitchell's best-seller and hit No. 1 on the Cashbox chart?
Court and Spark
Court and Spark put Bob Dylan to sleep when she played him the finished tape, by her own account; it became her biggest seller all the same.
It appeared on The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
Q 24Mitchell wrote most of Hejira (1976) while doing what?
Driving alone across America
Driving alone across America, heading home from Maine in her own car, she wrote on guitar as she went, which is why, she said, the album has no piano songs.
Q 25Which virtuoso bassist played on Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter?
Jaco Pastorius
Jaco Pastorius arrived after Hejira was already recorded: she overdubbed his bass on four songs, delighted by a player who, as her drummer put it, almost never played the root.
Q 26Which jazz giant asked Mitchell to collaborate on his final recordings, released in 1979?
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus, by then gravely ill with ALS, wrote six melodies for her to put words to; he died in January 1979, before the album that bears his name was finished.
Q 27What was Joni Mitchell's blackface alter ego on the cover of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter called?
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau began as her costume for a 1976 Halloween party and went onto the album sleeve a year later; in 2024 the cover was replaced on new pressings and streaming services.
Q 28Whom did Mitchell marry in 1982?
Larry Klein
Larry Klein was the bassist and engineer on the album she was making when they met; the marriage ended in 1994, but he went on co-producing her records into the 2000s.
Q 29Which British synth-pop musician did Mitchell struggle to work with on Dog Eat Dog (1985)?
Thomas Dolby
Thomas Dolby was her label's choice of producer; she wanted him only as a programmer and player, saying that if he took charge it wouldn't really be her music.
Q 30Which 1994 album, winner of the Best Pop Album Grammy, marked Mitchell's 'startling comeback'?
Turbulent Indigo
It coincided with the end of her marriage to Larry Klein, who co-produced it.