Bernard Shakey
When I first heard ‘Circle Game’ by Joni Mitchell, she told me ‘Sugar Mountain’ had inspired it. Both songs were less than a year old at the time. Chick Roberts, of the DIRTY SHAMES, a Canadian group I saw in Toronto’s Yorkville Village, the center of the Canadian folk scene, told me it was a very special song. That meant so much to me at 20 years old!
This version from ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ is about eight or nine years past that time, and life had taken me to so many new places that I was spinning. The earliest live recording is from the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor Michigan, two days before my birthday 11-10-68. You can search it out with the keyhole (top right) and follow the song’s history right there. There are many versions.
The absolute first version of Sugar Mountain was from a demo session in New York City, auditioning for Elektra records in 1965 a few short months before I left Canada with Bruce Palmer to maybe start a band with Steve Stills if we could find him in Hollywood. That audition tape is found in ‘Early Years’, part of NYA volume 1, available on the timeline in 1967 or thereabouts. It is a listen. You can feel it.
ny