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Rock
& Roll Museum
Janis Joplin
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Singer
Janis Joplin was perhaps the premier white blues singer of the
Sixties, and certainly one of the biggest female stars of her
time. Even before her death, her tough blues-mama image only barely
covered her vulnerability. The publicity concerning her sex life
and problems with alcohol and drugs made her something of a legend.
In re cent years periodic attempts to recast her life and work
within the context of feminism have met with mixed results, and
of her deceased contemporaries (Hendrix, Jim Morrison, et al.),
she is perhaps the least well known to younger audiences.
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Born
into a comfortable middle-class family, Joplin was a loner
by her early teens, developing a taste for blues and folk
music; soon she retreated into poetry and painting. She
ran away from home at age 17 and began singing in clubs
in Houston and Austin, Texas, to earn money to finance a
trip to California. By 1965 she was singing folk and blues
in bars in San Francisco and Venice, California, had dropped
out of several colleges, and was drawing unemployment checks.
She returned to Austin in 1966 to sing in a country &
western band, but within a few months a friend of San Francisco
impresario Chet Helms told her about a new band, Big Brother
and the Holding Company, that needed a singer in San Francisco.
She returned to California and joined Big Brother [see entry].
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Joplin and Big Brother stopped the show at the 1967 Monterey Pop
Festival; Albert Grossman agreed to manage them, and Joplin was
on her way to becoming a superstar. After a fairly successful
first LP with Big Brother, Columbia Records signed the unit, and
Cheap Thrills, with the hit single "Piece of My Heart"
(#12, 1968) became a gold #1 album. Within a year Joplin had come
to overshadow her backing band, and she left Big Brother (though
she appears, uncredited, on a few tracks on the group’s 1971 Be
a Brother LP), taking only guitarist Sam Andrew with her to
form the Kozmic Blues Band.
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Joplin toured constantly and made television appearances
as a guest with Dick Cavett, Tom Jones, and Ed Sullivan.
Finally the Kozmic Blues LP appeared, with gutsy
blues-rock tracks like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)."
During this time she became increasingly involved with alcohol
and drugs, eventually succumbing to heroin addiction. Yet
her life seemed to be taking a turn for the better with
the recording of Pearl. She was engaged to be married
and was pleased with the Full Tilt Boogie Band she’d formed
for the Pearl album (Pearl was her nickname). On
October 4,1970, her body was found in her room at Hollywood’s
Landmark Hotel, face down with fresh puncture marks in her
arm. The death was ruled an accidental heroin overdose.
The
posthumous Pearl LP (#1, 1971) yielded her #1 hit
version of former lover Kris Kristofferson’s "Me and
Bobby McGee" and was released with one track, "Buried
Alive in the Blues," missing the vocals Joplin didn’t
live to complete. Several more posthumous collections have
been released, as well as the 1974 documentary Janis.
The 1979 film The Rose, starring Bette Midler,
was a thinly veiled account of Joplin’s career. She has
since been the subject of several biographies, including
Love, Janis, penned by her psychotherapist sister
Laura.
.Interesting
Links:
Janis
Joplin - Site Oficial na Sony
Janis
Joplin - International Web Site
Send
your comments to:
coments@portaldorock.com.br
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