Background information
Birth name Janis Lyn Joplin
Born January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, USA
Died October 4, 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA
Genre(s) Blues-rock
Hard rock
Occupation(s) Singer, songwriter, arranger
Instrument(s) Guitar
Vocals
Label(s) Columbia
Associated
acts Big Brother & the Holding Company
Website http://www.officialjanis.com/
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American
blues-influenced rock singer and occasional songwriter with a highly distinctive
voice. Joplin released four albums as the frontwoman for several bands from
1967 to a posthumous release in 1971.
Life and career
Early life
Janis Joplin was born at St. Mary Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas, the daughter
of Seth Ward Joplin and Dorothy Bonita East.[1] Her father was an engineer
at Texaco. Janis had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. As a teenager,
she befriended a group of outcasts, including Jim Langdon and Grant Lyons,
the latter of whom played her the blues for the first time. She began listening
to musicians such as Leadbelly, Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton
and singing in the local choir. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she
was mostly shunned. Among her high school classmates was another individual
destined for stardom: future college and NFL coach Jimmy Johnson. In a 1992
Sports Illustrated profile of his career, Johnson claimed that he gave Janis
the high school nickname of "beat weeds." Primarily a painter, it
was in high school that she first began singing blues and folk music with
friends. Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended the University
of Texas in Austin, though she never attained a degree. One persistent story
is of her being nominated in a Fraternity contest "The Ugliest Man on
Campus." She lived in a building commonly referred to as "The Ghetto"
which was located at 2812 1/2 Nueces Street. The building has since been torn
down and replaced with new apartment buildings. The rent was a mere $40 a
month when she lived there.
Cultivating a rebellious manner that could be viewed as "liberated" — the women's liberation movement was still in its infancy at this time — 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, lived in North Beach and in Haight-Ashbury as well as Corte Madera. On 25 June 1964 Janis and Jefferson Airplane guitar player Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards at Jorma's Mother's House in San Jose, CA , further accompanied by Margaretta Kaukonen on typewriter (as percussion instrument). These lo-fi sessions 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 were later released as the Bootleg Album The Typewriter Tape.
Around this time her drug use began to increase, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other intoxicants. She was a heavy drinker throughout her career, and her trademark beverage was Southern Comfort.
Like many other female singers of the era, Joplin's feisty public image was at odds with her real personality. The book Love, Janis, written by her sister, has done much to further the reassessment of her life and work and reveals the private Joplin to have been a highly intelligent, articulate, shy and sensitive woman who was devoted to her family.
