Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and musician. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at

Monterey Pop Festival The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day music festival held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix ...

, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band

Big Brother and the Holding Company Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After som ...

. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the

Kozmic Blues Band Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and musician. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. ...

and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the

Woodstock Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aq ...

festival and on the ''

Festival Express ''Festival Express'' is a 2003 documentary film about the 1970 train tour of the same name across Canada taken by some of North America's most popular rock bands, including the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, Buddy Guy, Flying Burrito Br ...

'' train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, including a cover of the

Kris Kristofferson Kristoffer Kristofferson (born June 22, 1936) is a retired American singer, songwriter and actor. Among his songwriting credits are " Me and Bobby McGee", " For the Good Times", " Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and " Help Me Make It Through the ...

song "

Me and Bobby McGee "Me and Bobby McGee" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson and originally performed by Roger Miller. Fred Foster shares the writing credit, as Kristofferson wrote the song based on a suggestion from Foster. A posthu ...

", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "

Piece of My Heart "Piece of My Heart" is a romantic soul love song written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns, originally recorded by Erma Franklin in 1967. Franklin's single peaked in December 1967 at number 10 on the ''Billboard'' Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles char ...

", " Cry Baby", " Down on Me", "

Ball and Chain A ball and chain is a physical restraint device historically applied to prisoners, primarily in the British Empire and its former colonies, from the 17th century until as late as the mid-20th century. A type of shackle, the ball and chain is ...

", " Summertime", and her original song "

Mercedes Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquartere ...

", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, ''

Pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...

'', was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the ''Billboard'' charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'' ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold.

Early life

Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a

registrar A registrar is an official keeper of records made in a register. The term may refer to: Education * Registrar (education), an official in an academic institution who handles student records * Registrar of the University of Oxford, one of the se ...

at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at

Texaco Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company unt ...

. She had two younger siblings, Laura and Michael. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th ...

denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists

Bessie Smith Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock a ...

Ma Rainey Gertrude "Ma" Rainey ( Pridgett; April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of s ...

, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of

Pro Football Hall of Fame The Pro Football Hall of Fame is the hall of fame for professional American football, located in Canton, Ohio. Opened on September 7, , the Hall of Fame enshrines exceptional figures in the sport of professional football, including players, coa ...

coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "

nigger In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cases ...

lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." 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 The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

(UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, '' The Daily Texan'', ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fo ...

trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine ''

The Texas Ranger ''The Texas Ranger'' is a 1931 American pre-Code Western film directed by D. Ross Lederman.Freak Brothers cartoonist

Gilbert Shelton Gilbert Shelton (born May 31, 1940) is an American cartoonist and a key member of the underground comix movement. He is the creator of the iconic underground characters '' The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers'', ''Fat Freddy's Cat'', and ''Wonder W ...

, who befriended her, she used to sell ''

The Texas Ranger ''The Texas Ranger'' is a 1931 American pre-Code Western film directed by D. Ross Lederman.Beat poets Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery ...

. Her first song, " What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend

Chet Helms Chester Leo "Chet" Helms (August 2, 1942 – June 25, 2005), often called the father of San Francisco's 1967 " Summer of Love," was a music promoter and a counterculture figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the mid- to-late 196 ...

to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist

Jorma Kaukonen Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen, Jr. (; ; born December 23, 1940) is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist. Kaukonen performed with Jefferson Airplane and still performs regularly on tour with Hot Tuna, which started as a side project with bass ...

recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", " Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", " Hesitation Blues", "

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" is a blues standard written by pianist Jimmie Cox in 1923 and originally performed in a Vaudeville-blues style. The lyrics in the popular 1929 recording by Bessie Smith are told from the point of vie ...

", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album ''The Typewriter Tape''. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, 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 alcoholic beverage was

Southern Comfort Southern Comfort (often abbreviated SoCo) is an American, naturally fruit-flavored, whiskey liqueur with fruit and spice accents. The brand was created by bartender Martin Wilkes Heron in New Orleans in 1874, using whiskey as the base spirit. W ...

. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told ''Rolling Stone'' magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a

beehive A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus '' Apis'' live and raise their young. Though the word ''beehive'' is commonly used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature ...

hairdo, and enrolled as an

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

major at

Lamar University Lamar University (Lamar or LU) is a public university in Beaumont, Texas. Lamar has been a member of the Texas State University System since 1995. It was the flagship institution of the former Lamar University System. As of the fall of 2021, t ...

in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman

Mance Lipscomb Mance Lipscomb (April 9, 1895 – January 30, 1976) was an American blues singer, guitarist and songster. He was born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas. As a youth he took the name Mance (short for ''emancipation'') from a friend of hi ...

, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the

United Way United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit fundraising affiliates. United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public, prior to 2016. United Way organizations raise funds ...

. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined

, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by

Buffy Sainte-Marie Buffy Sainte-Marie, (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American ( Piapot Cree Nation) singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. While working in these ...

. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled '' This is Janis Joplin 1965'' by James Gurley.

1966–1969: Big Brother and the Holding Company

Janis Joplin Big Brother and the Holding Company

In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band

, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...

. She was recruited to join the group by

, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the

Avalon Ballroom The Avalon Ballroom was a music venue in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco, California, at 1244 Sutter Street (or 1268 Sutter, depending on the entrance). The space is known as the location of many concerts of the counterculture move ...

in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "''Janis went nuts!'' I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album ''Cheaper Thrills''. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan Ronald Charles McKernan (September 8, 1945 – March 8, 1973), known as Pigpen, was an American musician. He was a founding member of the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played in the group from 1965 to 1972. McKernan grew up he ...

. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with

Bob Shad Robert "Bob" Shad (born Abraham Shadrinsky; February 12, 1920 – March 13, 1985) was an American record producer and record label owner. He produced the first album by Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin). Among his ...

's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the

by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami,

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Moby Grape Moby Grape is an American rock band founded in 1966, known for having all five members contribute to singing and songwriting, and who collectively merged elements of folk music, blues, country, and jazz with rock and psychedelic music. They were ...

, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months in her Lyon Street apartment. A driver's license, issued to Joplin in 1967, shows her residence as 122 Lyon Street #3, in San Francisco. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West,

Winterland Winterland Ballroom (more commonly known as Winterland Arena or simply Winterland) was an ice skating rink and music venue in San Francisco, California. The arena was located at the corner of Post Street and Steiner Street. It was converted for ...

, and the

. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California.

Debut Album and Rise in Popularity

The band's debut studio album, ''

Big Brother & the Holding Company Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After some i ...

'', was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the

. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles " Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "

," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary '' Monterey Pop'' released by

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...

. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of

the Mamas & the Papas The Mamas & the Papas were a folk rock vocal group formed in Los Angeles, California, which recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968. The group was a defining force in the music scene of the counterculture of the 1960s. The group consisted of Am ...

seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager

John Byrne Cooke John Byrne Cooke (October 5, 1940 – September 3, 2017) was an American author, musician, and photographer. He was the son of Alistair Cooke, and the great-grandnephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the 1960s he played with the Bluegrass mus ...

, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager

Albert Grossman Albert Bernard Grossman (May 21, 1926 – January 25, 1986) was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music and rock and roll scene. He was famous as the manager of many of the most popular and successful performers of folk an ...

but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the ''Monterey Pop'' film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, 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. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix,

Buddy Guy George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues who has influenced generations of guitarists including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaugh ...

, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens,

Paul Butterfield Paul Vaughn Butterfield (December 17, 1942May 4, 1987) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and band leader. After early training as a classical flautist, he developed an interest in blues harmonica. He explored the blues scene in his n ...

, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. '' Live at Winterland '68'', recorded at the

Winterland Ballroom Winterland Ballroom (more commonly known as Winterland Arena or simply Winterland) was an ice skating rink and music venue in San Francisco, California. The arena was located at the corner of Post Street and Steiner Street. It was converted for ...

on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/

Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainmen ...

released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as '' Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968''. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on ''This Morning'', an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees

wiped Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives) usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect. Common reasons for loss A significant prop ...

the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. ''Time'' magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of '' Vogue'' magazine 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." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, '' Cheap Thrills''. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang

take A take is a single continuous recorded performance. The term is used in film and music to denote and track the stages of production. Film In cinematography, a take refers to each filmed "version" of a particular shot or "setup". Takes of each s ...

after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by

Elliot Mazer Elliot Mazer (September 5, 1941February 7, 2021) was an American audio engineer and record producer. He was best known for his work with Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Band, and Janis Joplin. In addition, he worked on film and telev ...

who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

cartoonist

Robert Crumb Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...

Cheap Thrills

Although ''Cheap Thrills'' sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". ''Cheap Thrills'' produced very popular hits with "

" and " Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film ''Monterey Pop'' at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. ''Cheap Thrills'' reached number one on the ''Billboard'' 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "

", reached number 12 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. 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 Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America, and remains a foca ...

. 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. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

(then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative ''

Washington Evening Star ''The Washington Star'', previously known as the ''Washington Star-News'' and the Washington ''Evening Star'', was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Washington, D.C., between 1852 and 1981. The Sunday edition was known as the ''Sunday Sta ...

'' at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

and at the

Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a Private university, private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1865 in Worcester, WPI was one of the United States' first engineering and technology universities and now has 14 ac ...

, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the

Butterfield Blues Band Paul Vaughn Butterfield (December 17, 1942May 4, 1987) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and band leader. After early training as a classical flautist, he developed an interest in blues harmonica. He explored the blues scene in his n ...

for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a

benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968.

1969–1970: Solo career

1969: January 1969 to December 1969

After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist

Sam Andrew Sam Houston Andrew III (December 18, 1941 – February 12, 2015) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, composer, artist and founding member and guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company. During his career as musician and composer ...

and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...

(R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by

Otis Redding Otis Ray Redding Jr. (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was an American singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the greatest singers in the history of American popular music and a seminal artist in soul music and rhythm and blues. ...

and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of ''

I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! ''I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!'' is the debut solo and third studio album overall by American singer-songwriter Janis Joplin, released on September 11, 1969. It was the first album which Joplin recorded after leaving her former band, Big ...

'' Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. '' Janis'', which was reviewed by ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). ''Janis'' also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of ''

The Dick Cavett Show ''The Dick Cavett Show'' was the title of several talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett on various television networks, including: * ABC daytime, (March 4, 1968–January 24, 1969) originally titled ''This Morning'' * ABC prime time, Tuesdays, We ...

'' that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as " To Love Somebody". Released in September 1969, the ''Kozmic Blues'' album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of ''Cheap Thrills''. Reviews of the new group were mixed. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...

'', were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter

Carl Bernstein Carl Milton Bernstein ( ; born February 14, 1944) is an American investigative journalist and author. While a young reporter for ''The Washington Post'' in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward, and the two did much of the original n ...

of ''

'', devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "

Kozmic Blues "Kozmic Blues" is a song from American singer-songwriter Janis Joplin's '' I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!'' album, her first after departing Big Brother and the Holding Company. It was a part of Joplin's set at the Woodstock Festival ...

" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", " To Love Somebody", and " Little Girl Blue", ''I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!'' reached number five on the ''Billboard'' 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at

starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant

Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...

and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer

Grace Slick Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing; October 30, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter, artist, and painter. Slick was a key figure in San Francisco's early psychedelic music scene in the mid-1960s. With a music career spanning four decades, ...

standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was " three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain".

Pete Townshend Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is co-founder, leader, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Townsh ...

, who performed with

the Who The Who are an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, bass guitarist and singer John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They are considered ...

later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind

Crosby, Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) were a folk rock supergroup made up of American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. When joined by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young as a fourth member ...

during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by

David Crosby David Van Cortlandt Crosby (born August 14, 1941) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Crosby joined the Byrds in 1964. They got ...

in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir ''And a Voice to Sing With'' (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for '' Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More'', although the 25th anniversary director's cut of ''

'' includes her performance of " Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with

Tina Turner Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939) is an American-born Swiss retired singer and actress. Widely referred to as the " Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before ...

during

the Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the g ...

concert at the Garden on

Thanksgiving Day Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...

. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by

Johnny Winter John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014) was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also produced three Grammy Award-win ...

and

. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note he sangwith 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture.

1970: January 1970 to October 1970

At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... ndhad joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." ''

'' magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in

Larkspur, California Larkspur is a city in Marin County, California, United States. Larkspur is located south of San Rafael, at an elevation of . As of the 2020 Census, the city's population was 13,064. Larkspur's Police Department is shared with that of the ...

. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with

Ronnie Hawkins Ronald Cornett Hawkins (January 10, 1935 – May 29, 2022) was an American singer-songwriter, long based in Canada, whose career spanned more than half a century. His career began in Arkansas, United States, where he was born and raised. He ...

and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's ''my'' band. Finally it's ''my'' band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. 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

, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the

Hells Angels The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is a worldwide outlaw motorcycle club whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporati ...

at a venue in

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...

on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside

, the Band,

the Flying Burrito Brothers The Flying Burrito Brothers are an American country rock band, best known for their influential 1969 debut album, ''The Gilded Palace of Sin''. Although the group is perhaps best known for its connection to band founders Gram Parsons and Chris ...

Ten Years After Ten Years After are a British rock group, most popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Between 1968 and 1973, the band had eight consecutive Top 40 albums on the UK Albums Chart. In addition, they had twelve albums enter the US ''Billboar ...

, the Grateful Dead,

Delaney & Bonnie Delaney & Bonnie were an American duo of singer-songwriters Delaney Bramlett and Bonnie Bramlett. In 1969 and 1970, they fronted a rock/soul ensemble, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, whose members at different times included Duane Allman, Gregg ...

, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...

, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of

tequila Tequila (; ) is a distilled beverage made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila northwest of Guadalajara, and in the Jaliscan Highlands ('' Los Altos de Jalisco'') of the central western Mexican s ...

. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "

Tell Mama Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) is a national project which records and measures anti-Muslim incidents in the United Kingdom. It is modelled on the Jewish Community Security Trust (CST) and like the CST it also provides support for v ...

". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the '' Farewell Song'' (1982) album. The audio of other ''Festival Express'' performances was included on Joplin's ''In Concert'' (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the ''

'' DVD. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in '' Vogue''s profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of ''

''. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent ''Cavett Show'' broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring

Gloria Swanson Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most f ...

, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at

Shea Stadium Shea Stadium (), formally known as William A. Shea Municipal Stadium, was a multi-purpose stadium in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York City.

in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the '' San Diego Union''. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for

—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of ''The New York Times'' carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "

", a song (partially inspired by a

Michael McClure Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous ...

poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" riedman's wordsvery close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before cts that opened for JoplinSeatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us oplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Tornwalked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s t 30 Broad Street in Port Chester" While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the

Harvard Stadium Harvard Stadium is a U-shaped college football stadium in the northeast United States, located in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The stadium is owned and operated by Harvard University and is home to the Harvard Crimson footb ...

in Boston. ''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...

'' gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with

The Doors The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most controversial and influential rock acts ...

. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous ''

'' (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of

and

Fred Foster Fred Luther Foster (July 26, 1931 – February 20, 2019) was an American record producer, songwriter, and music business executive who founded Monument Records. As a record producer he was most closely associated with Roy Orbison, and was also ...

's "

" (Kristofferson had previously been one of Joplin's lovers). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an '' a cappella'' arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of

Nick Gravenites Nicholas George Gravenites (; born October 2, 1938) is an American blues, rock and folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his work with Electric Flag (as their lead singer), Janis Joplin, Mike Bloomfield and several influentia ...

's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Janis Joplin performing

Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near

Sunset Sound Recorders Sunset Sound Recorders is a recording studio in Hollywood, California, United States located at 6650 Sunset Boulevard. Background The Sunset Sound Recorders complex was created by Walt Disney's Director of Recording, Tutti Camarata, from a colle ...

, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, ''Going Down With Janis'' (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former

Delta Air Lines Delta Air Lines, Inc., typically referred to as Delta, is one of the major airlines of the United States and a legacy carrier. One of the world's oldest airlines in operation, Delta is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline, along w ...

stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book ''Buried Alive'', she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for ''Cheap Thrills'' and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and " Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...

. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the

Dale Evans Dale Evans Rogers (born Frances Octavia Smith; October 31, 1912 – February 7, 2001) was an American actress, singer, and songwriter. She was the third wife of singing cowboy Roy Rogers. Early life Evans was born Frances Octavia Smith on ...

composition " Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for

's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told

immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her.

Personal life

Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus,

, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with Joplin in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography ''Scars of Sweet Paradise'' was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran ''Mnasidika'', a clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was

platonic Plato's influence on Western culture was so profound that several different concepts are linked by being called Platonic or Platonist, for accepting some assumptions of Platonism, but which do not imply acceptance of that philosophy as a whole. It ...

for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The ''Woodstock'' concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book ''Going Down With Janis'', which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" in San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a

threesome In human sexuality, a threesome is commonly understood as "a sexual interaction between three people whereby at least one engages in physical sexual behaviour with both the other individuals". Though ''threesome'' most commonly refers to sexua ...

to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was high on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of ''Buried Alive'' (1973):

Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in oplin'searly teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as Beaumont,_Texas_in_1965_and_1966.html" ;"title="he psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966">he psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966Mr. ernardGiarritano put it n an interview with Friedman "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs efore she first met Giarritanoas did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined!

Kim France Kim France is an American editor, journalist, and author. She was the founding editor of '' Lucky'', an award-winning national magazine that folded in 2015, and is the author of ''The Lucky Shopping Manual'' (2003), which has 150,000 copies in pr ...

reported in her May 2, 1999 ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a

truck driver A truck driver (commonly referred to as a trucker, teamster, or driver in the United States and Canada; a truckie in Australia and New Zealand; a HGV driver in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the European Union, a lorry driver, or driver in ...

, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of

and delighted in playing the role of

sexual predator A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically "predatory" or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to "hunt" ...

." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman:

I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with ''that''!

Death

On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke.Cooke, John Byrne.''On the Road with Janis Joplin''. New York: Berkley Books, 2014. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner

Thomas Noguchi is the former Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles. Popularly known as the "coroner to the stars", Noguchi determined the cause of death in many high-profile cases in Hollywood during the 1960s and 1970s. He performed a ...

, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin

overdose A drug overdose (overdose or OD) is the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities much greater than are recommended.

, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues ("there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent," wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at

Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary is a cemetery and mortuary located in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood, with an entrance from Glendon Avenue. The cemetery was ...

in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

Legacy

Legacy in the 1970s

Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the " 27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist

Jon Pareles Jon Pareles (born October 25, 1953) is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of ''The New York Times''.The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled ''Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin'' (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, ''Going Down With Janis'' (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta's co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate

described Caserta as "halfway between a

groupie The term groupie is a slang word that refers to a fan of a particular musical group who follows the band around while they are on tour or who attends as many of their public appearances as possible, with the hope of meeting them. The term is us ...

and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of ''Going Down With Janis'', Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. According to Joplin's biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on '' 20/20''. In 2018, Caserta denounced ''Going Down With Janis'' as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled ''I Ran Into Some Trouble''. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. Joplin's

body art Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. Body art covers a wide spectrum including tattoos, body piercings, scarification, and body painting. Body art may include performance art, body art is likewise utilized for investi ...

, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist

Lyle Tuttle Lyle Gilbert Tuttle (October 7, 1931 – March 26, 2019) was an American tattoo artist and historian of the medium, who had been tattooing since 1949. He tattooed Janis Joplin, Cher, Jo Baker, Paul Stanley, Jeff Scranton, and many other American ...

, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers.

The Mamas & the Papas The Mamas & the Papas were a folk rock vocal group formed in Los Angeles, California, which recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968. The group was a defining force in the music scene of the counterculture of the 1960s. The group consisted of Am ...

' song "Pearl" (1971), from their '' People Like Us'' album, was a tribute.

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death, and romantic relationships. He was inducted in ...

's song " Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, '' Garcia'' (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by

on her '' Come from the Shadows'' (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer

Jane Birkin Jane Mallory Birkin, OBE (born 14 December 1946) is an English-French singer and actress. She attained international fame and notability for her decade-long musical and romantic partnership with Serge Gainsbourg. She also had a prolific career ...

, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix,

Brian Jones Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones (28 February 1942 – 3 July 1969) was an English multi-instrumentalist and singer best known as the founder, rhythm/lead guitarist, and original leader of the Rolling Stones. Initially a guitarist, he went on to prov ...

and

Marc Bolan Marc Bolan ( ; born Mark Feld; 30 September 1947 – 16 September 1977) was an English guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a pioneer of the glam rock movement in the early 1970s with his band T. Rex. Bolan was posthumously inducted in ...

. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album '' I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die'' (1967). The film '' The Rose'' (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled ''Pearl''—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the

Academy Award for Best Actress The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year ...

for her performance in the film.

Legacy in 1980s

In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas.

Legacy after 1990

In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, ''Love, Janis'', authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the '' Dick Cavett Show'', that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of

LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...

blotting paper Blotting paper, called bibulous paper, is a highly absorbent type of paper or other material. It is used to absorb an excess of liquid substances (such as ink or oil) from the surface of writing paper or objects. Blotting paper referred to as ...

, designer of the ''Cheap Thrills'' cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play ''

Love, Janis ''Love, Janis'' is a 2001 collection of Janis Joplin's performances interspersed with readings of her personal letters to her family throughout her career. It is a companion to the Love, Janis (musical), Off-Broadway musical of the same title (co ...

'' was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and 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, played to packed houses and was held over several times.

Legacy after 2010

In 2013, Washington's

Arena Stage Arena Stage is a not-for-profit regional theater based in Southwest, Washington, D.C. Established in 1950, it was the first racially integrated theater in Washington, D.C. and its founders helped start the U.S. regional theater movement. It is ...

featured a production of ''A Night with Janis Joplin'', starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of

Odetta Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and a civil rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire co ...

and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of

Musicians Institute Musicians Institute (MI) is a private for-profit music school in Los Angeles, California. MI students can earn Certificates and – with transfer of coursework taken at Los Angeles City College – Associate of Arts Degrees, as well as Bachelor ...

. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film '' Janis: Little Girl Blue'', directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a ''New York Times'' Critics' Pick.

Influence

Joplin had a profound influence on many singers.

Pink Pink is the color of a namesake flower that is a pale tint of red. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, politeness, ...

said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her

Try This Tour The Try This Tour was the second concert tour by American recording artist P!nk. The tour was launched in support of her third studio album ''Try This'' (2003) and visited Europe and Australia. About the show The show itself was split into f ...

, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!"

Discography

Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to

; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material.

Studio albums

As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company

As solo artist

Live albums

Compilation albums

Singles

As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company

As solo artist

Filmography

* '' Monterey Pop'' (1968) * '' Petulia'' (1968) * ''Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt'' (1969) * '' Janis'' (1974) * ''Janis: The Way She Was'' (1974) * ''Comin' Home'' (1988) * ''

– The Lost Performances'' (1991) * '' Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut)'' (1994) * ''

'' (2003) * '' Nine Hundred Nights'' (2004) * ''

: Rock Icons'' (2005) Shout Factory * ''Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock'' (2005) * ''

This is Tom Jones ''This Is Tom Jones'' is an ATV variety series starring Tom Jones. The series was exported to the United States by ITC Entertainment and was networked there by ABC. The series ran between 1969 and 1971 to total 65 colour episodes. Jones was no ...

'' (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show * ''Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition'' (2009) * ''Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain'' (DVD) Charly (2009) * '' Janis: Little Girl Blue'' (2015)

Explanatory notes

References

External links

*
Janis Joplin
at the

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...

s * *
Janis Joplin on the Music-Map
* * as Kozmic Blues Band {{DEFAULTSORT:Joplin, Janis 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people

Early life

1966–1969: Big Brother and the Holding Company

Debut Album and Rise in Popularity

Cheap Thrills

1969–1970: Solo career

1969: January 1969 to December 1969

1970: January 1970 to October 1970

Personal life

Death

Legacy

Legacy in the 1970s

Legacy in 1980s

Legacy after 1990

Legacy after 2010

Influence

Discography

Studio albums

As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company

As solo artist

Live albums

Compilation albums

Singles

As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company

As solo artist

Filmography

Explanatory notes

References

Further reading

External links