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Janis Lyn Joplin was born January 19, 1943 and died October 4, 1970.
In between she led a triumphant and tumultuous life blessed by an
innate talent to convey powerful emotion through heart-stomping
rock-and-roll singing.
Born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas,
a small Southern petroleum industry town, she gravitated to artistic
interests cultivated by parents Seth and Dorothy Joplin.Janis broke
with local social traditions during the tense days of racial
integration, standing up for the rights of African Americans whose
segregated status in her hometown seared her youthful ideals. Along
with fellow band beatnik-reading high school students, she pursued
the non-traditional via arts and literature, especially music. They
gravitated to folk and jazz with Janis especially taken with the
blues.
Discovering an inborn talent to belt the blues, Janis
began copying the styles of Bessie Smith, Odetta and Leadbelly. She
played the coffee houses and hootenannies of the day in the small
towns of Texas. She later ventured to the beatnik haunts of Venice,
North Beach and the Village in New York, eventually landing in
Austin, Texas as a student at the University of Texas. Jumping into
the on-the-edge lifestyle cultivated by the beats, Janis thrilled at
her creativity, but almost lost herself in experiments with drugs
and alcohol, especially speed.
Returning home for a year to
question her life direction, she excelled at college but was never
content. Music still called to her in spite of its dangerous
association with drugs. “The two aren’t wedded,” her friends
counseled.
When old Austin friend, Chet Helms, then in San
Francisco, called to offer her a singing audition with an
up-and-coming local group, Janis was tempted. She found a vital San
Francisco community, turned upside down by the flower children of
1966, and was offered the singing position in a relatively obscure
group called “Big Brother and the Holding Company. “Big Brother
played in the Bay area and up and down the California coast, to
ever-increasing enthusiasm for their unique brand of psychedelic
rock. They initially signed with Mainstream Records, a small outfit
that did little promotion, but did produce an album and two singles,
“Blindman” and “All Is Loneliness.”
Then during the summer of
1967–the “Summer of Love”–Big Brother played a large concert, The
Monterey International Pop Festival. Janis smashed through her
anonymity with Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain” and the world
took note.The group was actively courted by Albert Grossman, one of
the most powerful entertainment managers of the day. Through his
representation, they signed a three-record recording contract with
Columbia Records, who bought out Mainstream’s rights. Their “Cheap
Thrills” album was released in August, 1968 and soon went gold,
presenting the hits “Piece of My heart” and “Summertime.” The band
was playing to large audiences, for big fees, and the billing now
read “Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company.” The
pressure mounted, income rose and hippie rockers indulged themselves
with their new ability to use high-priced drugs. Drugs began
affecting their performing and work relationships and in Christmas
of 1968, the group played its last gig together.
Janis formed
a new group, oriented more toward blues and released a new album “I
Got Dem ‘Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama” in September of 1969. In the
U.S., mixed reviews greeted the new sound but in Europe the group
was welcomed with loudly enthusiastic praise. Still the
anything-goes lifestyle grew with greater use of drug and alcohol to
both increase the artistic creativity and to handle the tensions of
coming down. Finally recognizing the problems in her life, Janis
quit her drug use. She formed a third band, called Full Tilt Boogie
Band, which evolved more professional popular sound. Janis felt
she’d finally found her unique style of white blues. She was never
happier with her new music.
While recording her next album
“Pearl,” she chanced into using heroin again. Obtaining a dose more
pure than usual, she accidentally overdosed in a motel in Los
Angeles at the age of 27. Her third album was released posthumously
to wide acclaim, launching the popular songs “Me and Bobby McGee”
and Mercedes Benz.” Janis’s albums have gone gold, platinum, and
triple-platinum. Her “Greatest Hits” album still tops the charts in
Billboard. Several new releases have followed her death, with wide
acclaim for her boxed set, “Janis.” She was the subject of a 1973
feature documentary, “Janis,” and numerous TV documentaries, the
most notable being VH-1’s Legends program. She is currently the
subject of two hotly contested biographical movie projects. |
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