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JANIS JOPLIN - THE BLUES LEGEND

PROFESOR COORDONATOR:

LAURA OANCEA ANCA BARBU

ELEVĂ:

IRIMIA MARIA- ALEXANDRA

INTRODUCTION

Janis Lyn Joplin, born on January 19, 1943 and death on

October 4, 1970, was a US singer-songwriter who first rose

to fame in the late 1960s as the lead singer of

the psychedelic/acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding

Company, and later as a solo artist with her own backing

groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie

Band. Her first ever large scale public performance was at

the Monterey Pop Festival; this led her to becoming very

popular and one of the major attractions at

the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour.

Joplin charted five singles; other popular songs include: "Summertime"; "Piece of My Heart";

"Ball 'n' Chain"; "Maybe"; "To Love Somebody"; "Kozmic Blues";"Cry Baby"; and her only

number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee".

Known for her powerful, blues-inspired vocals, Joplin released her first solo effort, I Got Dem

Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, in 1969. The album received mixed reviews, but her second

project, Pearl (1971), released after Joplin's death, was a huge success.Joplin was well known

for her performing ability and was a multi instrumentalist. Her fans referred to her stage

presence as "electric"; at the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of

Psychedelic Soul". Known as "Pearl" among her friends, she was also a painter, dancer and

music arranger. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists

of All Time in 2004 and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She

was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Joplin remains one of the top-

selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of

America certifications of 15.5 million albums sold in the USA.

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CHAPTER I: EARLY LIFE

Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas to Dorothy

Bonita East, a registrar at a business college, and her

husband, Seth Ward Joplin, an engineer at Texaco. She had

two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family

attended the Church of Christ. The Joplins felt that Janis

always needed more attention than their other children, with

her mother stating, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied

without [receiving a lot of attention]. The normal rapport

wasn't adequate." As a teenager, she befriended a group of

outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie

Smith, Ma Rainey and Lead Belly, whom Joplin later

credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing in the local choir

and expanded her listening to blues singers such as Odetta, Billie Holiday and Big Mama

Thornton.

Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with

friends. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she stated that she was mostly shunned.

Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers." As a teen,

she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which

required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names

like "pig", "freak", "nigger lover" or "creep". Among her classmates were G. W. Bailey and

Jimmy Johnson. Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College

of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at

Austin, though she did not complete her studies. The campus newspaper The Daily Texan ran

a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different". The

article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they're

more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she

gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin."

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CHAPTER II: ENTRY INTO THE WORLD OF MUSIC

2.1 Texas and San Francisco (1962–1965)

Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines

and, in part, after the Beat poets. Her first song recorded on tape, at the home of a fellow

University of Texas student in December 1962, was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do".

She left Texas for San Francisco ("just to get away from

Texas", she said, "Because my head was in a much

different place") in January 1963, living in North Beach

and later Haight-Ashbury. In 1964, Joplin and future

Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a

number of blues standards, further accompanied by

Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter (as a percussion

instrument). This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind",

"Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out",

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues", and was later released as the bootleg

album The Typewriter Tape. Around this time, her drug use increased, and she acquired a

reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive

drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite beverage was Southern

Comfort. In early 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the physical effects of her

intravenous methamphetamine habit (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"),

persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. In May 1965, Joplin's friends threw her a bus-

fare party so she could return home. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine

writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many

friends and I didn't like the ones I had."For at least six months after she returned to her

parents' home in Port Arthur, she regularly corresponded by mail with Peter De Blanc, with

whom she had been romantically involved in San Francisco.

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De Blanc, a year and ten months her junior, was a well-educated New Yorker. Shortly after he

and Joplin both moved away from San Francisco and their beatnik lifestyle, De Blanc was

hired by IBM to work with computers at the company's location in East Fishkill, New York,

and Joplin's letters reached him at his New York home.

Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, Joplin changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and

alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University

in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to

perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by

local musicians for Texas bluesman, Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering from major health

problems. Another of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman.

Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. Now living in New York where

he worked with IBM computers, he visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for

her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who

traveled frequently, terminated plans for the marriage soon afterwards. Just prior to joining

Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin recorded seven studio tracks in 1965. Among

the songs she recorded was her original composition for her song "Turtle Blues" and an

alternate version of "Codine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new

album in 1995 entitled “This is Janis Joplin 1965” by James Gurley.

2.2 Big Brother and the Holding Company: 1966–1968

In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention

of the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the

Holding Company, a band that had gained some renown

among the nascent hippie community in Haight-

Ashbury. Joplin blew the band away during her audition,

and was quickly offered membership into the group. In

her early days with Big Brother, she sang only a few

songs and played the tambourine in the background. But it wasn't long before Joplin assumed

a bigger role in the band, as Big Brother developed quite a following in the Bay Area.

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Their appearance at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in

1967—specifically their version of "Ball and Chain" (originally

made famous by R&B legend Big Mama Thornton) brought the

group further acclaim. Most of the praise, however, focused on

Joplin's incredible vocals. Fueled by heroin, amphetamines and the

bourbon she drank straight from the bottle during gigs, Joplin's

unrestrained sexual style and raw, gutsy sound mesmerized

audiences—and all of this attention caused some tension between

Joplin and her band mates.

After hearing Joplin at Monterey, Columbia Records President Clive Davis wanted to sign the

band. Albert Grossman, who already managed Bob Dylan, the Band, and Peter, Paul & Mary,

later signed on as the band's manager, and was able to get them out of another record deal

they'd signed earlier with Mainstream Records. While their recordings for Mainstream never

found much of an audience, Big Brother's first album for Columbia, Cheap Thrills (1968),

was a huge hit. While the album was wildly successful—quickly becoming a certified gold

record with songs like "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime"—creating it had been a

challenging process, causing even more problems between Joplin and band's other members.

(The album was produced by John Simon, who'd had the band do take after take in an attempt

to create a technically perfect sound.)

Cheap Thrills helped solidify Joplin's reputation as a unique, dynamic, bluesy rock singer.

Despite Big Brother's continued success, Joplin was becoming frustrated with group, feeling

that she was being held back professionally.

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CHAPTER III: SOLO CAREER

3.1 Successful albums and tours (1969–1970)

Joplin struggled with her decision to leave Big Brother, as

her band mates had been like a family to her, but she

eventually decided to part ways with the group. She

played with Big Brother for the last time in December

1968. Joplin left Big Brother, taking guitarist Sam

Andrew with her. Her first solo album, I’ve Got Dem Ol’

Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, appeared in 1969, and she

toured extensively with her Kozmic Blues Band.

Joplin appeared at Woodstock in the late hours of Saturday, August 16, 1969. She performed

until the early morning hours of Sunday, August 17. Despite her reportedly not even knowing

of the festival's existence, the Woodstock promoters were advertising her as a headliner. She

thus became one of the main attractions of the historic concert. Her friend Peggy Caserta

claims in her book Going Down With Janis (1973) that she had encouraged a reluctant Joplin

to perform at Woodstock. Throughout her performance she frequently spoke to the crowd,

asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. She pulled

through, however, and the audience was so pleased they cheered her on for an encore, to

which she replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Her performances of "Kozmic Blues" and

"Work Me, Lord" at Woodstock are notable, though her voice breaks while she sings.

Joplin began using heroin again when she returned to the United States. Her relationship with

Niehaus soon ended because of him witnessing her shooting drugs at her new home in

Larkspur, California, her romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an

intravenous addict, and her refusal to take some time off work and travel the world with him.

Around this time she formed her new band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band was

composed mostly of young Canadian musicians and featured an organ, but no horn section.

Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie Band than she did with

her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!"

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From June 28 to July 4, 1970, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie

joined the all-star Festival Express train tour through Canada,

performing alongside Buddy Guy, The Band, Ten Years After,

Grateful Dead, Delaney and Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian &

Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg and

Calgary. Janis jammed with the other performers on the train

and her performances on this tour are considered to be among

her greatest. During the Festival Express tour, Joplin was

accompanied by Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, who later

wrote several articles and two books on Joplin. She told Dalton:”I'm a victim of my own

insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything ... It used to make me very

unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make

that feeling work for me. I'm full of emotion and I want a release, and if you're on stage and if

it's really working and you've got the audience with you, it's a oneness you feel.”

During late August, September and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and

recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, who had produced

recordings for The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed,

there was still enough usable material to compile a long-playing record.

The result of the sessions was the posthumously-released Pearl (1971). It became the biggest

selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson's

"Me and Bobby McGee". Kristofferson had been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970. The

opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men

treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of the acappella

"Mercedes Benz", written by Joplin, Bob Neuwirth and Beat poet Michael McClure. The

track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. The track "Buried

Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was

found dead, was included as an instrumental.

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3.2 Tragic Death and Legacy

On Sunday, October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild

became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at

Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full

Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the

Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin

was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted

Porsche in the parking lot. Upon entering Joplin's

room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was

an overdose of heroin, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes that Joplin had

accidentally been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her

dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.

Despite her untimely death, Janis Joplin's songs continue to attract new fans and inspire

performers. Numerous collections of her songs have been released over the years, including In

Concert (1971) and Box of Pearls (1999). In recognition of her significant accomplishments,

Joplin was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and honored

with a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards in 2005.

Dubbed the "first lady of rock 'n' roll," Joplin has been the subject of several books and

documentaries, including Love, Janis (1992), written by sister Laura Joplin. That book was

adapted into a play of the same title. Amy Berg’s documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue,

premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2015.

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