Editing Joni Mitchell (section)

===1964–1967: Career beginnings, motherhood, and first marriage===
She continued to play gigs as a folk musician on weekends at her college and at a local hotel. Around this time she took a $15-a-week job in a Calgary coffeehouse called The Depression Coffee House, "singing long tragic songs in a minor key". She sang at [[hootenannies]] and made appearances on local TV and radio shows in Calgary.<ref name="GIGS">{{cite web |url=http://jonimitchell.com/chronology/ |title=A Chronology of Appearances |publisher=JoniMitchell.com |access-date=February 11, 2017 |archive-date=February 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140208001839/http://www.jonimitchell.com/chronology/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1964, at the age of 20, she told her mother that she intended to be a folk singer in Toronto. She left western Canada for the first time in her life, heading east for Ontario. Mitchell wrote her first song, "Day After Day", on the three-day train ride. She stopped at the [[Mariposa Folk Festival]] to see [[Buffy Sainte-Marie]], an American folk singer<ref>{{cite news |last1=Leo |first1=Geoff |last2=Woloshyn |first2=Roxanna |last3=Guerriero |first3=Guerriero |title=Who is the real Buffy Sainte-Marie? |url=https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/buffy-sainte-marie |access-date=October 31, 2023 |work=CBC News |date=October 27, 2023 |archive-date=October 27, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231027111549/https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/buffy-sainte-marie |url-status=live }}</ref>  who had inspired her. A year later, Mitchell played Mariposa, her first gig for a major audience, and years later Sainte-Marie herself covered Mitchell's work.

Lacking the $200 needed for musicians' union fees, Mitchell performed at a few gigs at the Half Beat and the Village Corner in Toronto's [[Yorkville, Toronto|Yorkville]] neighbourhood, but she mostly played non-union gigs "in church basements and [[YMCA]] meeting halls". Rejected from major folk clubs, she resorted to [[busking]],<ref name="GIGS"/> while she "worked in the women's wear section of a downtown department store to pay the rent."<ref>{{cite web|last=Bradley|first=Jeff|title=A Witness to Troubled Times|url=http://jonimitchell.com/library/print.cfm?id=1139|agency=Associated Press|date=May 13, 1988|access-date=April 29, 2014|archive-date=April 30, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140430125128/http://jonimitchell.com/library/print.cfm?id=1139|url-status=live}}</ref> She lived in a rooming house, directly across the hall from poet [[Duke Redbird]].<ref name=dirtpoor>{{cite web |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/437645518 |title=Joni: 'Dirt poor,' 20 and pregnant; Excerpts from a new book reveal details of Joni Mitchell's life in '60s Toronto |work=[[Toronto Star]] |date=April 7, 1997 |access-date=February 11, 2017 |archive-date=February 12, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170212091253/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/doc/437645518.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Apr+7%2C+1997&author=by+John+Goddard+SPECIAL+TO+THE+STAR&pub=Toronto+Star&edition=&startpage=E.1&desc=Joni%3A+%60Dirt+poor%2C%27+20+and+pregnant+Excerpts+from+a+new+book+reveal+details+of+Joni+Mitchell%27s+life+in+%2760s+Toronto |id={{ProQuest|437645518}} |url-status=live }}</ref> Mitchell also began to realize each city's folk scene tended to accord veteran performers the exclusive right to play their signature songs—despite not having written the songs—which Mitchell found insular, contrary to the egalitarian ideal of folk music. She found her best traditional material was already other singers' property. She said she was told {{"'}}You can't sing that. That's my song.' And I named another one. 'You can't sing that. That's my song.' This is my introduction to territorial songs. I ran into it again in Toronto." She resolved to write her own songs.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q2yFAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT43|title=Joni Mitchell – In Her Own Words|page=43|first=Malka|last=Marom|publisher=ECW Press|date=September 1, 2014|isbn=9781770905818|access-date=November 1, 2020|archive-date=November 6, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201106064308/https://books.google.com/books?id=q2yFAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT43|url-status=live}}</ref>

Mitchell discovered that she was pregnant by her Calgary ex-boyfriend Brad MacMath in late 1964. She later wrote, "[He] left me three months pregnant in an attic room with no money and winter coming on and only a fireplace for heat. The spindles of the banister were gap-toothed—fuel for last winter's occupants."<ref name="LINER">{{cite web |url=http://jonimitchell.com/music/album.cfm?id=24 |title=Words and Music |publisher=JoniMitchell.com |access-date=April 9, 2012 |archive-date=May 4, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504111546/http://jonimitchell.com/music/album.cfm?id=24 |url-status=live }}</ref> <!--At the time, "[[combined oral contraceptive pill|the pill]]" was legally unavailable in Canada, as was abortion, yet there was a strong social stigma against women giving birth out of wedlock. In Toronto, she could at least do so quietly, without alarming her relatives back home.--> She gave birth to a baby girl in February 1965. Unable to provide for her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson, she placed her for adoption. The experience remained private for most of Mitchell's career, although she alluded to it in several songs, such as "[[Little Green (song)|Little Green]]", which she performed in the 1960s and recorded for the 1971 album ''[[Blue (Joni Mitchell album)|Blue]]''. In "Chinese Cafe", from the 1982 album ''[[Wild Things Run Fast]]'', Mitchell sang, "Your kids are coming up straight / My child's a stranger / I bore her / But I could not raise her."

The existence of Mitchell's daughter was not publicly known until 1993, when a roommate from Mitchell's art school days in the 1960s sold the story of the adoption to a tabloid magazine.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-04-08-ls-46389-story.html|title=Both sides at last|first=Bill|last=Higgins|date=April 8, 1997|access-date=November 27, 2011|work=Los Angeles Times|archive-date=January 11, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111161743/http://articles.latimes.com/1997-04-08/news/ls-46389_1_joni-mitchell|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Pertman|first=Adam|title=Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming Our Families – and America|url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=RzCLgIfmegMC|page=289}}|access-date=November 27, 2011|date=March 16, 2011|publisher=Harvard Common Press|isbn=978-1-55832-716-0|pages=289–}}</ref> By that time, Mitchell's daughter, renamed Kilauren Gibb, had already begun a search for her biological parents. Mitchell and her daughter met in 1997.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Johnson |first=Brian D |url=http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joni-mitchells-secret/ |title=Joni Mitchell's Secret |magazine=Maclean's |date=April 21, 1997 |access-date=March 9, 2007 |archive-date=May 31, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200531091111/https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joni-mitchells-secret |url-status=live }}</ref> After the reunion, Mitchell said that she lost interest in songwriting, and she later identified her daughter's birth and her inability to take care of her as the moment when her songwriting inspiration had begun.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-sep-05-ca-hilburn5-story.html |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608185547/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-sep-05-ca-hilburn5-story.html |archive-date=June 8, 2021 |title=An art born of pain, an artist in happy exile |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=September 5, 2004 |first=Robert |last=Hilburn |author-link=Robert Hilburn |access-date=September 1, 2023}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

A few weeks after the birth of her daughter, Mitchell was playing gigs again around Yorkville, often with a friend, Vicky Taylor, and was beginning to sing original material for the first time, written with her unique open tunings. In March and April she found work at the Penny Farthing, a folk club in Toronto. There she met New York City-born American folk singer Charles Scott "Chuck" Mitchell, from [[Michigan]]. Chuck was immediately attracted to her and impressed by her performance, and he told her that he could get her steady work in the coffeehouses he knew in the United States.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=4256|title=Jason Schneider, "Joni: A New Voice", ''Songwriters Magazine''|website=Jonimitchell.com|access-date=October 28, 2020|archive-date=August 11, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210811225329/https://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=4256|url-status=live}}</ref><!-- In one interview,{{where?|date=February 2018}} Mitchell claimed she married Chuck only 36 hours after they met, but it is unclear if they were ever married in Toronto. -->

Mitchell left Canada for the first time in late April 1965. She travelled with Chuck Mitchell to the US, where they began playing music together.<ref name="GIGS" /> Joni, 21 years old, married Chuck in an official ceremony in his hometown in June 1965 and took his surname. She said, "I made my dress and bridesmaids' dresses. We had no money{{nbsp}}... I walked down the aisle brandishing my daisies."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1282|title=JoniMitchell.com Library: Joni Mitchell: Word, March 2005|website=Jonimitchell.com|access-date=November 26, 2014|archive-date=March 5, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140305070101/http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1282|url-status=live}}</ref> Mitchell is both a Canadian and US citizen.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Fischer |first=Doug |date=October 7, 2006 |title=Joni Mitchell's Fighting Words |url=https://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1460 |quote=And while she still sees herself as a Canadian first – she is now both a Canadian and U.S. citizen – Ms. Mitchell believes the country is sliding dangerously close to assimilation with the U.S., politically, economically and culturally. |access-date=March 9, 2022 |archive-date=March 29, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220329033929/http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=1460 |url-status=live }}</ref>

While living at the Verona apartments in Detroit's [[Cass Corridor]], the couple regularly performed at area coffee houses, including the Chess Mate on Livernois, near Six Mile Road; the Alcove bar, near [[Wayne State University]]; the Rathskeller, a restaurant on the campus of the [[University of Detroit]]; and the Raven Gallery in [[Southfield, Michigan|Southfield]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detroit/March-2009/Sixties-Folklore/|title=Sixties Folklore|work=Hour Detroit|date=March 2009|first=George|last=Bulanda|access-date=June 14, 2013|archive-date=October 28, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121028191239/http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detroit/March-2009/Sixties-Folklore/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.thevarsitynews.net/news/view.php/104192/From-The-VN-Archives-Stars-like-Joni-Mit |title=From The VN Archives: Stars like Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt polished their talents at Chessmate coffeehouse blocks from campus |last=Grant |first=Cody |date=March 2, 2011 |website=The Varsity News |access-date=April 3, 2018 |archive-date=June 12, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612140919/http://www.thevarsitynews.net/news/view.php/104192/From-The-VN-Archives-Stars-like-Joni-Mit |url-status=live }}</ref> She began playing and composing songs in alternative guitar tunings taught to her by a fellow musician, [[Eric Andersen]], in Detroit.{{sfnp|Monk|2012|p=68|ps=}} [[Oscar Brand]] featured her several times on his CBC television program ''[[Let's Sing Out]]'' in 1965 and 1966. The marriage and partnership of Joni and Chuck Mitchell ended with their divorce in early 1967, and she moved to New York City to follow her musical path as a solo artist. She played venues up and down the East Coast, including [[Philadelphia]], [[Boston]], and [[Fort Bragg, North Carolina]]. She performed frequently in coffeehouses and [[folk clubs]] and, by this time creating her own material, became well known for her unique songwriting and innovative guitar style.