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| Janis Joplin |
The following account of her life comes from http://www.wikipedia.com/:
Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on January 19, 1943. Her mother was registrar at a business college and her father was an engineer for Texaco. Joplin's parents felt that Janis always needed more attention than her two siblings: According to her mother, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied without [receiving a lot of attention]. The normal rapport wasn't adequate."
As a teenager, Joplin was friends with a group of students who were considered outcasts. One of them had albums by African-American blues artists Bessie Smith and Leadbelly, 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 and Big Mama Thornton.
Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. She stated that she was mostly shunned in high school. 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" or "creep."
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.
Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after the Beat poets. She left Texas for San Francisco in 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 percussion instrument).
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 the spring of 1965, Joplin's friends, noticing the physical effects of her amphetamine habit, persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. Back in Port Arthur, she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, began wearing relatively modest dresses, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as a sociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas.
In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, who brought her back to San Francisco. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drug use for several weeks, enjoining bandmate Dave Getz to promise that using needles would not be allowed in their rehearsal space or in the communal apartment where they lived. When the group moved with the Grateful Dead to a house in Lagunitas, Californina, Joplin relapsed into hard drugs.
Her band's debut album was released by Columbia Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. In November 1967, the group parted ways with Chet Helms and signed with top artist manager Albert Grossman. Up to this point, Big Brother had performed mainly in California, but had gained national prominence with their Monterey performance.
During the spring of 1968, Joplin and Big Brother made their nationwide television debut on The Dick Cavett Show. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement," and Richard Goldstein, in Vogue magazine, wrote that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock... she slinks like tar, scowls like war... clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener."
The group' second album, Cheap Thrills, gave the band a breakthrough hit single, Piece of My Heart, which reached the number one spot on the Billboard charts eight weeks after its release, remaining for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release.
On August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. The group continued touring through the fall and Joplin gave her last official performance with Big Brother on December 1, 1968.
Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt Rhythm and Blues bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays, who were major musical influences on Joplin. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a more bluesy, funky, soul, pop-oriented sound than most of the hard-rock psychedelic bands of the period.
By early 1969, Joplin was addicted to heroin, allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day.
The Kozmic Blues album, released in September 1969, was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band toured North America and Europe throughout 1969, appearing at Woodstock in August. By most accounts, Woodstock was not a happy affair for Joplin. Faced with a ten hour wait after arriving at the festival, she shot heroin and was drinking alcohol, so by the time she hit the stage, she was "three sheets to the wind." At the end of the year, the group broke up.
After a short time off drugs, Joplin began using heroin again. Around this time she formed her new band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, composed mostly of young Canadian musicians and featured an organ, but no horn section.
Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. Her last public performance, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, took place on August 12, 1970 at the Harvard Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts.
During September 1970, Joplin and her band began recording a new album in Los Angeles. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was still enough usable material to compile an LP. Mercedes Benz was included despite it being a first take, and 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 kept as an instrumental. The result 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 not long before her death. In 2003, Pearl was ranked #122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The last recordings Joplin completed were Mercedes Benz and a birthday greeting for John Lennon (Happy Trails, composed by Dale Evans) on October 1, 1970. Lennon, whose birthday was October 9, later told Dick Cavett that her taped greeting arrived at his home after her death. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites' song Buried Alive in the Blues prior to recording the vocal track, scheduled for the next day. When she failed to show up at the studio by Sunday afternoon, producer Paul A. Rothchild became concerned. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel (since renamed the Highland Gardens Hotel) where Joplin had been a guest since August 24. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche still in the parking lot. Upon entering her room, he found her dead on the floor. The official cause of death was an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol. Cooke believes that Joplin had accidentally been given heroin which was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.
Joplin was cremated and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean and along Stinson Beach. The only funeral service was a private affair, attended by Joplin's parents and maternal aunt. Joplin's will funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. Brownies laced with hashish were unknowingly passed around while party members contained their emotions of grief.
Watch Joplin's live performance of Piece of My Heart.
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