It’s quite a tes­ta­ment to Joni Mitchell’s musi­cian­ship that her “voice is arguably the most under­rat­ed aspect of her music.” So writes a con­trib­u­tor to The Range Place, an online project that ana­lyzes the vocal ranges of pop­u­lar singers. This is not to say that Mitchell’s voice is underrated—far from it—but her adven­tur­ous, deeply per­son­al lyri­cism and exper­i­men­tal song­writ­ing are how she is most often dis­tin­guished from the cohort of 60s singer-song­writ­ers who emerged from the folk scene. (She first became known as the writer of Judy Collins’ hit, “Both Sides, Now.”)

That said, there’s no mis­tak­ing her for any oth­er singer. “With very wide vibra­to, she would fre­quent­ly reach into her upper reg­is­ter com­fort­ably with a bliss­ful falset­to while still being able to reach some smooth low­er notes with ease.” You can hear exam­ples of her vocal range above, in excerpts from dozens of songs, both stu­dio and live ver­sions, record­ed through­out her career. “She was a mez­zo-sopra­no through the late six­ties and sev­en­ties, with her voice stand­ing out among oth­er singer-song­writ­ers due to its unusu­al com­fort in the fifth octave.”

There are many oth­er qual­i­ties that set Mitchell’s voice apart, includ­ing her incred­i­ble sense of pitch and rhythm. As ses­sion singer and vocal coach Jaime Bab­bitt writes, “singers who study singing and play instru­ments that make chords are bet­ter than all the rest. Joni Mitchell played many: dul­cimer, gui­tar, piano, and flute, even ukulele as a child.” Mitchell’s instru­men­tal skill gave her pre­cise vocal tim­ing, “a crit­i­cal and often over­looked singer-skill,” and one that con­tributes huge­ly to a vocal per­for­mance.

Her love of jazz infus­es even her folki­est songs with rhyth­mic vocal pat­terns that run up and down the scale. (Hear an exam­ple in the iso­lat­ed vocals from 1971’s “Riv­er,” just above.) Just as every singer’s voice will do, Mitchell’s range nar­rowed with age. “Her voice nowa­days,” writes The Range Place (though she no longer per­forms), “is clos­er to that of a con­tral­to than to that of a mez­zo-sopra­no, hav­ing low­ered sub­stan­tial­ly more than oth­er singers from the seventies”—a like­ly out­come of her life­long smok­ing habit.

It’s com­mon to say of an old­er singer that “she can’t hit the high notes any­more,” but this judg­ment miss­es out on the rich­ness of a mature voice. Mitchell’s “indomitable tech­nique” nev­er wavered in her lat­er years, Paul Tay­lor argues at The Inde­pen­dent. Her lat­er voice was “stun­ning (bereft, bewil­dered, sto­ical),” trans­formed from the ambi­tious, pierc­ing falset­to to “radiant/rueful” and wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Joni Mitchell Sing an Immac­u­late Ver­sion of Her Song “Coy­ote,” with Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn & Gor­don Light­foot (1975)

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When Clare Tor­ry went into the stu­dio to record her now-leg­endary vocals for Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky,” the cen­ter­piece of 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, nei­ther the singer nor the band were par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with each oth­er. David Gilmour remem­bered the moment in an inter­view on the album’s 30th anniver­sary:

Clare Tor­ry did­n’t real­ly look the part. She was Alan Par­sons’ idea. We want­ed to put a girl on there, scream­ing orgas­mi­cal­ly. Alan had worked with her pre­vi­ous­ly, so we gave her try. And she was fan­tas­tic. We had to encour­age her a lit­tle bit. We gave her some dynam­ic hints: “Maybe you’d like to do this piece qui­et­ly, and this piece loud­er.” She did maybe half a dozen takes, and then after­wards we com­piled the final per­for­mance out of all the bits. It was­n’t done in one sin­gle take.

Asked the fol­low-up ques­tion “what did she look like?,” Gilmour replied, “like a nice Eng­lish house­wife.”

Tor­ry, for her part, was hard­ly starstruck. “If it had been the Kinks,” she lat­er said, “I’d have been over the moon.” She also remem­bers the ses­sion very  dif­fer­ent­ly. “They had no idea” what they want­ed,” she says. Told only “we don’t want any words,” she decid­ed to “pre­tend to be an instru­ment.” She remem­bers “hav­ing a lit­tle go” and knock­ing out the ses­sion in a cou­ple takes.

This Rashomon sce­nario involves not only faulty mem­o­ry but also the legal ques­tion as to who com­posed the song’s melody and vocal concept—a ques­tion even­tu­al­ly decid­ed, in 2004, in Torry’s favor, enti­tling her to roy­al­ties.

She clear­ly wasn’t about to become a tour­ing mem­ber of the band, even after the album’s mas­sive suc­cess and two sub­se­quent tours. Still, while Tor­ry may not have suit­ed Gilmour’s phys­i­cal pref­er­ences for female singers, and while she may not have thought much of Pink Floyd, she has appeared live with their dif­fer­ent iter­a­tions over the years, includ­ing a show at the Rain­bow The­atre in Lon­don just months after the album’s release (fur­ther up). Lat­er, in 1987, Tor­ry appeared again, this time with Roger Waters at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um on his K.A.O.S. on the Road Tour.

Tor­ry would then join the David Gilmour-led Pink Floyd in 1990 for “Great Gig in the Sky” at Kneb­worth. I do not think she resem­bles an Eng­lish house­wife in the con­cert film at the top—or at least no more than the rest of the band look like mid­dle-aged Eng­lish hus­bands. But she still pulls off the soar­ing vocal, more or less, sev­en­teen years after she first stepped into the stu­dio, hav­ing lit­tle idea who Pink Floyd was or what would become of that fate­ful ses­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Down­right Great

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness