Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer, songwriter and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

  Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas on , to Seth Joplin (1910–87), an engineer at Texaco, and Dorothy (née East) Joplin (1913–98), a registrar ^{registrar (academic)} at a business college. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the Church of Christ ^{Churches of Christ} .. The normal rapport wasn't adequate."

As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom 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. While at Thomas Jefferson High School ^{Thomas Jefferson High School (Port Arthur, Texas)} , she stated that she was mostly shunned. The campus newspaper ran a profile of her in 1962 headlined "She Dares To Be Different." She left Texas for San Francisco in 1963, living in North Beach ^{North Beach, San Francisco, California} 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). 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 ^{Bootleg recording} 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 trademark beverage was Southern Comfort.

In the spring of 1965, Joplin's friends, noticing the physical effects of her amphetamine 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. Back in Port Arthur, she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, began wearing relatively modest dresses, adopted a beehive ^{Beehive (hairstyle)} hairdo, and enrolled as a sociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin ^{Austin, Texas} to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman. Joplin became engaged to a man who visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but the man terminated plans for the marriage soon after.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. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who had known her in Texas and who at the time was managing Big Brother. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in 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. the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater.

Cheap Thrills, which gave the band a breakthrough hit single, "Piece of My Heart," reached the number one spot on the Billboard charts eight weeks after its release, remaining for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, featured Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums.

The band made another East Coast tour during July / August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival 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 at a Family Dog ^{Chet Helms} benefit on December 1, 1968.
Kozmic Blues Band

After splitting from Big Brother, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt ^{Stax Records} Rhythm and Blues bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays, who were major musical influences on Joplin.


Full Tilt Boogie Band

In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed the singer's stage costumes from 1966 to 1969. Joplin was romanced by an American schoolteacher named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. They were photographed by the press at Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. In the August 3, 1970 Cavett broadcast, Joplin referred to her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York on August 6, 1970.

Joplin attended the reunion on August 14, accompanied by fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and her sister Laura, but it reportedly proved to be a rather unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. Interviewed by Rolling Stone ^{Rolling Stone (magazine)} journalist Chet Flippo, she was reported to wear enough jewelry for a "Babylonian whore." Also included was the social commentary of the a cappella "Mercedes Benz ^{Mercedes Benz (song)} ", written by Joplin, close friend and song writer Bob Neuwirth and beat poet ^{Beat generation} Michael McClure. In 2003, Pearl was ranked #122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time ^{Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time} .

During the recording sessions for Pearl, Joplin began seeing Seth Morgan, a 21 year-old Berkeley student, cocaine dealer and future novelist; and checked into the Landmark Motel in Los Angeles to begin recording the Pearl ^{Pearl (album)} album. She and Morgan became engaged to be married in early September and Joplin threw herself into the recording of songs for her new album.The last recordings Joplin completed were "Mercedes Benz ^{Mercedes Benz (song)} " and a birthday greeting for John Lennon ("Happy Trails ^{Happy Trails (song)} ", 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 ^{Sunset Sound Recorders} 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.

Joplin was cremated in the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Mortuary ^{Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery} in Los Angeles; her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean and along Stinson Beach. The only funeral service was a private affair held at Pierce Brothers and attended by Joplin's parents and maternal aunt., New York)
Joplin was a pioneer in the male-dominated rock music scene of the late 1960s, influencing generations of musicians to come. Stevie Nicks commented that after seeing Joplin perform, "I knew that a little bit of my destiny had changed. I would search to find that connection that I had seen between Janis and her audience. In a blink of an eye she changed my life."

Joplin's body decoration, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast, by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, is taken as a seminal moment in the tattoo revolution and was an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, often including colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers.

The 1979 film The Rose ^{The Rose (film)} was loosely based on Joplin's life. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.

In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis ^{Love, Janis (musical)} was created with input from Janis's younger sister Laura plus Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim and packed houses and was held over several times, the demanding role of the singing Janis attracting rock vocalists from relative unknowns to pop stars Laura Branigan and Beth Hart. A national tour followed.
Gospel According to Janis, a biographical film starring Zooey Deschanel as Joplin, was originally scheduled to begin shooting in early 2007, now has a projected release date in 2010.

At the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Janis, a one-woman show by Nicola Haydn, which imagined the last hour of Joplin's life, gained its first substantial run. It was nominated for 'Best Solo Performance' in The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence. The production tourbus also used a recreation of Joplin's Porsche by Brighton graffiti artist Req / on a VW Polo for budgetary reasons.

In 1988, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original bronze, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark ^{Douglas Clark (sculptor)} , was dedicated in Port Arthur, Texas.

Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum Exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet ^Convertible with psychedelically-designed painting ^{Art car} , and a sheet of LSD ^{Lysergic acid diethylamide#Forms of LSD} blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. She will be the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series for 2009.;Big Brother and the Holding Company


;Kozmic Blues Band


;Full Tilt Boogie


;Big Brother & the Holding Company / Full Tilt Boogie


;Later collections