Joni Mitchell recounted the circumstances that led her to wear blackface and become "the black guy in front" on the cover of her 1977 album, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, in a new interview with New York.
"I was being butchered by a dentist who was capping my teeth — and he was my dentist for about 12 years and one day he said, 'Oh, you've got the worst bite I've ever seen. You have teeth like a Negro male,'" she said. The next event that inspired her decision was seeing a man "diddy-bopping" – and she demonstrated a walk that the magazine described as "an irregular strut, one leg shorter than the other" – which prompted the man to tell her, "Mmm, mmm, mmm, you looking good, sister, you looking good." With a Halloween party on the horizon, she decided, "I'm going to go as him." Upon arrival in full makeup, she recalled people asking her if she was at the right party.
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