Court and Spark Court and Spark Court and Spark is the sixth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. It was an immediate commercial and critical success—and remains her most successful album. Released in January 1974, it infuses her folk rock style, which she developed throughout her previous five albums, with jazz inflections. It reached No. 2 in the United States and No. 1 in Canada and eventually received a Double Platinum certification by the RIAA, the highest of Mitchell's career. It also reached the Top 20 in the UK and was voted the best album of the year for 1974 in The
Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" is a big band jazz composition written in 1937 by Duke Ellington and recorded for the first time on May 15, 1937 by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, whose personnel were: Wallace Jones, Cootie Williams (trumpet), Rex Stewart (cornet), Barney Bigard (clarinet), Johnny Hodges, Otto Hardwick (alto saxophone), Laurence Brown, Joe Nanton (trombone), Harry Carney (clarinet, bass saxophone), Sonny Greer (drums), Wellmann Braud, Freddie Guy (guitar), and Duke Ellington (piano). No tenor saxophone was present in this recording section, nor in "Crescendo in Blue," which was recorded the same day. In