She became twenty-seven years old, but in that short time Janis Joplin made an indelible impression.
Janis Lyn Joplin (19 January 1943 – 4 October 1970) was an American singer. In the early sixties, Janis attended several universities but never graduated. Music attracted her more, especially blues, rock 'n' roll and soul. Her great influences were Odetta, Lead Belly, Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton and Otis Redding. In 1963, Joplin lived for a while in San Francisco where she became addicted to hard drugs, but she soon returned to Port Arthur to detox. In 1966, Joplin moved again to San Francisco at the invitation of the impresario of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Chet Helms. At first, the band was not successful, but the big breakthrough came with their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. With the album that followed, Cheap Thrills, Joplin definitively established her name as a blues singer. The well-known song by Canadian poet/singer Leonard Cohen, Chelsea Hotel No 2, was written for Joplin. At the Woodstock festival in August 1969, Joplin was one of the main attractions.
Joplin decided to leave Big Brother and the Holding Company and started The Kozmic Blues Band and later The Full Tilt Boogie Band. With the latter band, she made the album Pearl. Her last recordings were the song Mercedes Benz and a birthday greeting for John Lennon.
The invitation to come to San Francisco to sing with Big Brother and the Holding Company offered a solution. However, it was short-lived; as the band achieved more and more success, not only Joplin's income but also the pressure to perform increased. She could not handle this pressure and turned again to alcohol and drugs.
The album Pearl was released posthumously in 1971. One of Joplin's best-known songs on it, Me and Bobby McGee, written by Kris Kristofferson, was recorded just days before her death.
Joplin died at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose. She was found dead on 4 October 1970 in her hotel room in Los Angeles. It is suspected that the heroin that proved fatal was stronger than usual, as other customers of her dealer also died of overdoses that week. Joplin is one of the original members of the 27 club: within two years, four famous artists died at the age of 27. Since then, the term 27 club is often used for any artist who dies at that age.
Joplin is still considered one of the most influential blues singers of the sixties. Joplin's lyrics reflect a sense of pain and loneliness of a woman who had low self-esteem and was tormented by a lack of confidence.
Top 2000
In the 23rd edition of the Top 2000, Janis appears with the following entries:
Sunday Morning Classic: Pearl
On 26 July 2020, Janis was our guest as Sunday Morning Classic with the album Pearl.
Like another flower child whose legacy outlived their short time on this earth, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin gained worldwide fame after her performance at the Monterey festival. Her wailing rendition of Ball And Chain marked the arrival of a fiery blues screamer who made up in attitude what she perhaps lacked in technique. But two years later, after leaving the group with which she made her name - Big Brother And The Holding Company, she began a search for a band that could rock her and suppress her more idiosyncratic tendencies. After a year with the Kozmic Blues Band, she finally gathered what she considered her own band - The Full Tilt Boogie Band. After a summer 1970 tour, they settled down to record what would become Pearl. It would be her last recorded work.
Pearl is a smoother, more polished album than anything Janis had achieved before. Her other great album, Cheap Thrills, is a fine record but sloppy in execution. Pearl, on the other hand, is the sound of a growing artist. The Full Tilt Boogie Band keeps her on her feet with a track like A Woman Left Lonely, which she might have become complacent about earlier. Pearl's most famous track - Me And Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson - is a song that would not have suited her in 1967, but now her voice delivered it in an almost definitive style. Even a track as thrown away as the a cappella Mercedes Benz has a warmth that makes you wonder how she might have continued to mature.
There is a gaping hole in the middle of this great album in the form of Nick Gravenites' Buried Alive In The Blues. The aptly titled track remains an instrumental because Janis died the day before her vocals were to be added. Despite all its incompleteness (or perhaps because of it), Pearl remains a gem in the short, flamboyant career of a truly original artist.
Pearl has a main ingredient of classic rock and embraced blues and country influences quite well, given Joplin's reputation as a musician who had full control of her instrument. It is sad that she could not do the same for her life and could not enjoy the success of the album, which was released posthumously.
Source: Jan Liebregts and Wikipedia Photo: public domain
