Robben Ford’s head must have been spinning. Here he was, a blues guitar prodigy, barely in his twenties, and having signed up with the LA Express, the fusion band led by saxophonist Tom Scott, the gigs were coming in fast. There was the tour with Joni Mitchell, playing the material from Court And Spark, their performances captured on tape and released as the Miles Of Aisles live album. Mitchell then called the band back to accompany her in the studio as she tracked The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. It was an education. As Ford told MusicRadar, Joni Mitchell knew how to produce electric guitar sounds, and these were the kinds of collaborations that a young, talented musician would get into the business for. “She was always the easiest person in the world to be around, to work for, never uptight or heated,” he said. Ford was not altogether a rookie. In 1971, he and his brothers had the Charles Ford Blues Band, named for their father, and in their early professional assignments they had backed legendary blues harp player Charlie Musselwhite. Under Scott’s wing, however, Ford was seeing a completely different world, and they had just landed a gig to back George Harrison on his 1974 studio album, Dark Horse. Joni Mitchell and a Beatle in the same year. Ford grew up in small-town California, in a place called Ukiah, a two-hour drive from San Francisco. It was the best part of a working day from Los Angeles, nigh-on 500 miles on the road. Here he was with a Beatle. Ford lets out a laugh at the memory.“Well, in those days… I was 22! Twenty-two years old, you don’t know [anything],” he says, joining MusicRadar over Zoom. “And I’m from a small town, and had only in the last couple of years, I had spent two years with Jimmy Witherspoon, and that was in LA, and so being exposed to the city [laughs], all of that, really, I was very green.”
