Dave Van Ronk had met Joni Mitchell very early in her career when she was living in Detroit and performing with her first husband, Chuck Mitchell (Dave’s first impression, upon hearing her sing “Urge for Going”: “It was simply magical, and by the middle of the second verse, you could hear a pin drop”). When Joni split from Chuck and moved permanently to New York City, the two became fast friends, Joni a devoted fan of his brand of folk music and Dave a great admirer of her songwriting (“the best writer of the 1960s,” he said). On the rare occasion that Dave would write his own material, Joni would be a key inspiration.

Dave would record several of Mitchell’s songs, including “Urge for Going,” “That Song About The Midway,” and “Both Sides Now,” which he recorded as “Clouds,” allegedly inspiring Joni to name the album on which it would eventually appear Clouds. This arrangement of “River” does away with the Jingle Bells motif of Joni’s recording, instead pairing the lyrics with a sparse, idiosyncratic guitar part over which Dave sings in a very soft and very vulnerable voice.

It’s been said that Joni considered Dave to be the only artist to ever sing her songs better than she herself sang them. Friend and biographer Elijah Wald speculates as to why: “Dave’s rough growl counteracted the prettiness of the melodies, forcing listeners to hear the power of the poetry.”