Prince, Annie Lennox and Emmylou Harris find their muses on Joni Mitchell tribute.

Tribute albums are a risky endeavor, especially if you are a musician with a well-known style covering the work of a revered master.

Stick too close to the original and you lack imagination, aping the stylings of a familiar source. Take it too far down your usual road and you're an egotist, insulting the composer by burying her work underneath your own routine.

The best part about "A Tribute to Joni Mitchell," out today, is that so many of the performers make this arranged musical marriage work. The album is a pleasure-in-waiting, both for Mitchell newcomers, who were never drawn to her voice and personality but who might like her compositions, and for longtime fans, who know the material well enough to get the nuances and will likely play it again and again to pick them out.

Of course, some of the players do better than others, most notably Emmylou Harris, Annie Lennox and Prince, the stars of this 12-artist lineup on Nonesuch Records.

In a sense, Prince does exactly what you would expect. He shows off. He steals Mitchell's best song, "A Case of You" and drenches every note of it in purple. Forgive him the emotional exertion - and for dropping the first verse of the song, which sets up the lyric - because he delivers a classic.

Mitchell gets her props here; Prince preserves the melody and mood of Joni's melancholy love song. But he raises the stakes with a smooth gospel approach that so-serious Mitchell could admire but never deliver herself.

Harris and Lennox do even better, presenting tracks that actually top the originals. That is one part luck; their voices are better-suited for this particular material than Mitchell's.

But they deserve credit as well. Lennox keeps it simple, tweaks the arrangement electronically, and transforms "Ladies of the Canyon" from a drippy folk song about Southern California hippies into a timeless Canterbury tale fit for a 14th-century troubadour. Harris musters innocence and resolve for "Magdalene Laundries," Mitchell's compelling exposé about a notorious Irish home for cruelly banished "harlots." Joni's sophisticated singing made for great reporting; Emmylou's girlish wail embodies the place.

There are other swell moments, notably from Sarah McLachlan and k.d. lang, who keep their takes closer to Mitchell's (these Canadian gals don't mess with the Mother of their Country). McLachlan launches "Blue" into space, giving the song an ethereal glow but maintaining Joni's mood. Lang isn't out to upstage anybody and keeps her big notes to a minimum, but the song fits her like a tailored suit.

Others aren't as immediately distinct. "River" has been covered so many times that even James Taylor has trouble finding a new angle. Elvis Costello's "Edith and the Kingpin" is a great choice, but it doesn't come immediately alive. Same with Bjork's boldly rephrased "The Boho Dance."

Still others were lost at the start. "Free Man in Paris," Mitchell's 1974 tale of an industry honcho's job angst is too autobiographical to borrow, given that it was based on a trip Mitchell took with her friend, mogul David Geffen. Sufjan Stevens was a fool for trying.

"A tribute to Joni Mitchell" does suffer the weight of the music business. A few fresher names might have upped the challenge, but Nonesuch uses it as an opportunity to plug its own team.

But think of it as a tribute as well to the new and improved Nonesuch, formerly a bargain classical label, which has worked hard to recruit and bring attention to established performers. The label did it for Wilco and lang. And now it does the same for Mitchell.

Now that's a fitting tribute.

Staff writer Ray Mark Rinaldi can be reached at 303-954-1540 or rrinaldi@denverpost.com.