All I Want: A Song History

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"All I Want" is a Joni Mitchell song, and it opens Blue, her album released on June 22, 1971.[1] The album credits list James Taylor on guitar for the track.[1] In an article drawn from his interviews with Mitchell about writing Blue, Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers singles out her mountain dulcimer as central to the record's sound, and he counts "All I Want" among four songs on which she plays it, along with "Carey," "California," and "A Case of You."[2]

Misty gray print of a river at dusk, with a skyline on the far bank and a lone figure standing in a small boat

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne (Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea), lithotint, 1878. Shown for its mood; it has no connection to the song.

Rodgers dates Mitchell's purchase of her first dulcimer, from the builder Joellen Lapidus at the Big Sur Folk Festival, to 1969, but Lapidus, interviewed in 1997, could not say for certain whether that festival was in 1968 or 1969.[2][3] Mitchell told Rodgers that the instrument's light weight made it easy to carry on her travels in Europe, and that "I wrote most of Blue on it."[2] By Mitchell's account she ignored the traditional quill and struck the strings by hand, and Lapidus recalled showing her a "slap strum."[2][3] A dulcimer transcription of "All I Want" by Howard Wright, published on Mitchell's official website, puts the strings at F#, G# and G#.[4]

Aubrey Atwater taught a mountain dulcimer workshop on the song in January 2021, using that same F#-G#-G# tuning and concentrating on the 1971 recording from Blue.[5] Her arrangement, reprinted by permission, appears in Song By Song, Vol. II, her self-published book of dulcimer tablature, many of whose songs include lyrics.[6]

Our book that contains the song "All I Want"

Sources

  1. JoniMitchell.com: "Blue".
  2. Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers: "Inside the songs: Joni Mitchell on writing Blue".
  3. JoniMitchell.com: "A Conversation with Joellen Lapidus".
  4. JoniMitchell.com: "All I Want: Dulcimer tablature transcribed by Howard Wright".
  5. Atwater-Donnelly: "Workshop Videos and Handouts".
  6. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
  7. Image: James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne (Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea), lithotint, 1878. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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