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Janis Lyn Joplin (; January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American
who first rose to fame in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the
band , and later as a solo artist with her own backing groups, The
and The . Her first ever large scale public per this led her to becoming very popular and one of the major attractions at the
festival and the
train tour. Joplin
other popular songs include: ""; ""; ""; ""; ""; ""; ""; ""; ""; ""; and her only number one hit, "".
Joplin was well known for her performing ability and was a multi instrumentalist. Her fans referred to her stage presence as "electric"; at the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul". Known as "Pearl" among her friends, she was also a painter, dancer and music arranger.
ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004, and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She was inducted into the
Joplin as a senior in high school, 1960.
Janis Joplin was born in , on )January 19, 1943, to Dorothy Bonita East (February 15, 1913 – December 13, 1998), a
at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (April 19, 1910 – May 10, 1987), an engineer at . She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the . The Joplins felt that Janis always needed more attention than their other children, with her mother stating, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied without [receiving a lot of attention]. The normal rapport wasn't adequate." As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by
and , whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing in the local
and expanded her listening to blues singers such as ,
Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and
with friends. While at , she stated that she was mostly shunned. Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate ." As a teen, she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which required . Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig", "freak", "nigger lover" or "creep". Among her classmates were
and . Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended
in , during the summer and later the , though she did not complete her studies. The campus newspaper
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 Levis to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her
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."
Joplin's house at 122 Lyon Street in
in . She lived there in the 1960s with her boyfriend .
Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after the . Her first song recorded on tape, at the home of a fellow University of Texas student in December 1962, was "".
She left Texas for San Francisco ("just to get away from Texas", she said, "because my head was in a much different place") in January 1963, living in
and later . In 1964, Joplin and future
recorded a number of blues standards, further accompanied by Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter (as a percussion instrument). This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "", "", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues", and was later released as the
album The Typewriter Tape. Around this time, her drug use increased, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other
and was a heavy drinker t her favorite beverage was .
In early 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the physical effects of her
habit (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. In May 1965, Joplin's friends threw her a
so she could return home.
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."
For at least six months after she returned to her parents' home in Port Arthur, she regularly corresponded by mail with Peter de Blanc, with whom she had been romantically involved in San Francisco. De Blanc, a year and ten months her junior, was a well-educated New Yorker. Shortly after he and Joplin both moved away from San Francisco and their beatnik lifestyle, de Blanc was hired by
to work with computers at the company's location in , and Joplin's letters reached him at his New York home.
Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, Joplin changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a
hairdo, and enrolled as an
in nearby . During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to
to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman, , who was suffering from major health problems. Another of her performances was reviewed in the .
Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her, wearing a blue
suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, terminated plans for the marriage soon afterwards.
Just prior to joining , Joplin recorded seven studio tracks in 1965. Among the songs she recorded was her original composition for her song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by . These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995 entitled
by James Gurley.
Main article:
Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, circa .
In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the
band , a band that had gained some renown among the nascent
community in . She was recruited to join the group by , a promoter who had known her in Texas and who at the time was managing Big Brother. Helms brought her back to San Francisco and Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the
in San Francisco. In June, she was photographed at an outdoor concert 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 drug use for several weeks, enjoining bandmate Dave Getz to promise that using needles would not be allowed in their rehearsal space or in her apartment or in the homes of her bandmates whom she visited. When a visitor injected drugs in front of Joplin and Getz, Joplin angrily reminded Getz that he had broken his promise. A San Francisco concert from that summer was recorded and released in the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist 's wife Nancy moved to a house in , where they lived communally. They often partied with the , who lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.
promotional poster featuring .
On August 23, 1966, during a four-week engagement in Chicago, the group signed a deal with independent label . Joplin relapsed into drinking when she and her bandmates (except for bassist Peter Albin) joined some "alcoholic hipsters", as Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn described them, in Chicago. The band recorded tracks in a Chicago recording studio, but the label owner
refused to pay their airfare back to San Francisco. Shortly after four of the five musicians drove from Chicago to Northern California with very little money (Albin traveled by plane), they returned to Lagunitas. It was there that Joplin relapsed into intravenous drug use. Nancy Gurley was an . Three years later, Joplin, by then playing with a different band, was informed of Gurley's death from an overdose. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was the , a musical event held on January 29 at the
by the . Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder , , , and , donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met
of the group . The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the ,
and the . They also played at the
in Los Angeles, as well as in , Washington and , British Columbia, the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts, and the
The band's debut studio album, , was released by
in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the . The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "", 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 were filmed. "Combination of the Two" and a version of 's "" appear in the DVD box set of 's documentary
released by . The film captured , of , seated in the audience silently mouthing "Wow! That's really heavy!" during Joplin's performance of "". Only "" was included in the film that was released to theaters nationwide in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend Monterey Pop saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the box set. After switching managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen in 1966, the group signed with top artist manager , whom they met for the first time at Monterey Pop. For the remainder of 1967, Big Brother 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, the last day of their East Coast tour, Joplin and Big Brother performed with , , , , , and
at the "Wake for " concert in New York.
, recorded at the
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
released the compact disc. One month later,
recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released as
in 2012. In early 1968, Joplin and Big Brother made their nationwide television debut on , an
daytime variety show hosted by . Shortly thereafter, network employees
the videotape. Over the next two years, she made three appearances on the primetime Cavett program, and all were preserved. By 1968, the band was being billed as "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
wrote for the May 1968 issue of
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, Janis played a major role in the arrangement and production of the recordings that would become Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, . During the recording, Joplin was said to be the first person to enter the studio and the last person to leave. Footage of Joplin and the band in the studio shows Joplin in great form and taking charge during the recording for "". The album featured a cover design by
cartoonist . 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 "" was actually recorded in front
the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a cocktail glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "" and "". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's
on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin's successful, albeit short, musical career. Cheap Thrills reached No. 1 on the
album chart eight weeks after its release, remaining 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 No. 12 on the
in the fall of 1968.
The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the
convention in
and the . After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the
Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night final gig together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that
publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were
(then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and . But the band toured the United States that fall. Two performances at a
in , at a time when the
area's hard rock scene was in its infancy, were reviewed by John Segraves of the Evening Star. An opera buff at the time, he wrote, "Miss Joplin, in her early 20s, has been for the last year or two the vocalist with Big Brother and the Holding Company, a rock quintet of superior electric expertise. Shortly she will be merely Janis Joplin, a vocalist singing folk rock on her first album as a single. Whatever she does and whatever she sings she'll do it well because her vocal talents are boundless. This is the way she came across in a huge, high-ceilinged roller skating rink without any acoustics but, thankfully a good enough sound system behind her. In a proper room, I would imagine there would be no adjectives to describe her." Later that month, October 1968, Big Brother performed at
and . During a November concert at the
in , bassist Peter Albin made fun of Joplin in front of their audience, joking that when she panted after finishing a song she sounded like . Joplin's last performance with Big Brother, not counting two reunions in 1970, was at a
benefit on December 1, 1968.
After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians as well as Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist
and future
bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the
(R&B) bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by
and . The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a more bluesy, funky, soul, pop-oriented sound than most of the hard-rock psychedelic bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day, ($2500 in 2014 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of . Gabriel Mekler, who produced the Kozmic Blues, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that the singer had lived in his 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 cinemas in the documentary , which was reviewed by the
on March 21, 1975. The film shows Joplin arriving in
by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue while an American fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera.
Joplin performs with
in late 1969.
No security was used in Frankfurt so by the end of the concert the stage was so packed with people that the band members could not see each other. Another film was made of the band's performance in
featuring Joplin's interpretation of "". The Janis documentary also includes interviews with her in Stockholm and from her visit to
for her gig at . After appearing on German television, the Kozmic Blues Band performed on several American television shows with Joplin. On the , they performed "" and "Raise Your Hand", the latter with
singing a duet with Joplin. On one episode of , they performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "", As
interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't . She also revealed that she was a big fan of , saying that she was an incredible singer, dancer and show woman. Joplin and Turner also performed together on at least one occasion at .
The Kozmic Blues album, released in September 1969, was certified gold later that year, but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the recording quality and engineering of the record as well as the musicianship were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to t her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound.[]
Some music critics, including
of 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
of the , generally ignored the band's flaws and devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. In general the press concentrated more on her leaving Big Brother rather than the qualities of the new recording.[]
Columbia Records released "" as a single, which peaked at #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)", "", and "", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached No. 5 on the
soon after its release.[]
Joplin appeared at
in the late hours of Saturday, August 16, 1969. She performed until the early morning hours of Sunday, August 17. Despite her reportedly not even knowing of the festival's existence, the Woodstock promoters were advertising her as a headliner. She thus became one of the main attractions of the historic concert. Her friend Peggy Caserta claims in her book Going Down With Janis (1973) that she had encouraged a reluctant Joplin to perform at Woodstock.
Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. When she and the band were flown in by helicopter with the pregnant
and her mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became incredibly nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She deferred them to Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform, but she kept getting delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform before her. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, she shot heroin with Caserta and was drinking alcohol, so by the time she hit the stage, she was "three sheets to the wind". Joplin took the stage following . On stage her voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy and she found it hard to dance.
Throughout her performance she frequently spoke to the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. She pulled through, however, and the audience was so pleased they cheered her on for an encore, to which she replied and sang "". Her performances of "" and "" at Woodstock are notable, though her voice breaks while she sings.
, who performed with
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. She is said[] to have really enjoyed 's performance, who came on immediately after her.
also revealed in her autobiography that she and Joplin witnessed
from 's van.[]
Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with
the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. However, Joplin was ultimately unhappy with her performance and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the documentary film or the soundtrack, , although the 25th anniversary director's cut of
includes her performance of "". The documentary film of the festival that was released to theaters in 1970 includes, on the left side of a , 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward her dressing room tent. Laura Joplin said in an interview that her older sister went straight home to Port Arthur following Woodstock. She was incredibly vibrant and happy after coming home and really loved the festival. She told her family how great it was, but her mother and father remained distant on the subject as they did not really understand the hippie movement.
In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at
in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said he witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during a concert by
at the Garden on . Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During a Garden concert where she got solo billing on December 19, some observers believed she tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by
Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with '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. At the time of this June 1970 interview, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. , 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, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed the singer's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. 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. ... [and] had 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
in Rio de Janeiro. 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 George was that he wasn't into drugs."
"I'm not really thinking much, just sort of, trying to feel" – Joplin, having been asked by
what she thought about when she sang.
Joplin began using heroin again when she returned to the United States. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because of him witnessing her shooting drugs at her new home in , her romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and her refusal to take some time off work and travel the world with him. Around this time she formed her new band, the . The band was composed mostly of young Canadian musicians and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie Band than she did with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!"
The Full Tilt Boogie Band began touring in May 1970. Joplin remained quite happy with her new group, which 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
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. It was around this time that Joplin began wearing multi-coloured feather boas in her hair. By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased.
Janis Joplin sculpture (copper, sheet, 62cm) in 's Ferenc Erkel Grade School, , sculptor:
From June 28 to July 4, 1970, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie joined the all-star
train tour through Canada, performing alongside , , , , , , and . They played concerts in ,
and . Janis jammed with the other performers on the train and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest.
Joplin persuaded , who originally did not want to perform, to do so telling them it was going to be a great party.
Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, Janis took to the stage with
while her band was tuning up. She told the audience how great the tour was and presented the organisers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "". Throughout this performance, Janis went into several banters where she spoke about her failed love life. She finished the night with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "".
Footage of her performance of the song "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s and the sound was included on the 1982
album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on that 1972 Joplin In Concert album. Video of the performances was included on the
DVD. Some of her full performances of Festival Express exist, although all the footage has yet to be released. 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 the May 1968 issue of ), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin.
During the Festival Express tour, Joplin was accompanied by Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, who later wrote several articles and two books on Joplin. She told Dalton:
I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything ... It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me. I'm full of emotion and I want a release, and if you're on stage and if it's really working and you've got the audience with you, it's a oneness you feel.
Main article:
Among her last public appearances were two broadcasts of . In a 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." (Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys during her university years.) In a subsequent Cavett broadcast on August 3, 1970, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the
to be held at
in , New York, three days later.
On August 7, 1970, a tombstone - paid for by both Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for —was erected at Smith's previously-unmarked grave.
Joplin's last public performance, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, took place on August 12, 1970, at the
in Boston.
gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift sound amplifiers after their regular equipment was stolen in Boston.
Joplin attended her high-school reunion on August 14, accompanied by fellow musician and friend , road manager John Cooke, and her sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit.
journalist Chet Flippo reported that she wore enough jewelry for a "Babylonian whore". When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at
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 , who had produced recordings for . Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was still enough usable material to compile a long-playing record.
The result of the sessions was the posthumously released
(1971). It became the biggest selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of 's "". Kristofferson had been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970. 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 the
"", written by Joplin,
. The track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. The track "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. In 2003, Pearl was ranked No. 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the .
Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near , where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with , a 21-year-old
student, cocaine dealer and novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September even though 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 while in the studio. 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 1973 book Going Down With Janis 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
stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said that by September 1970, she was smuggling
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 she refused, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Within a few days Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer.
Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Myra Friedman had staged an
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 they were unaware that 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
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 experimenting with hard drugs.
On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "". Then Full Tilt Boogie recorded the instrumental track for "Buried Alive in the Blues". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to . Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by
with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday on October 9. Joplin, Pearson and Pierson chose the
composition "" 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.
The last recording Joplin completed was on October 1, 1970 – "". On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for ' song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded one week earlier. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone that Seth Morgan was staying at her Larkspur home and using her
with other women he had met that day. Others in the studio overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. She and band member Ken Pearson later left the studio and went to
for drinks. After midnight, Joplin drove him and a fan back to the Landmark Motor Hotel.
Joplin's C in " – Art of the Psychedelic Era" at the
in New York City.
On Sunday, October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session.
road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's
C Cabriolet in the parking lot. Upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was an overdose of heroin, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes that Joplin had accidentally been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.
Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2. She had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to the book Going Down With Janis, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark Motor Hotel 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 to get rid of all her incoming phone callers after midnight.) Morgan did speak to Joplin on the telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise.
funded $2,500 to throw a
party in the event of her demise. The party, which took place October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in , California, was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, fiancé Seth Morgan, and close friends, including tattoo artist , Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and road manager Cooke.
Joplin's death in October 1970 at the
stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just sixteen days earlier of another rock icon, , also at age 27. Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice". Music columnist
wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable". Author
claimed that Joplin was the female version of
in her ability to captivate an audience.
In 1973, a book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Going Down With Janis by Peggy Caserta attracted a lot of attention, with its provocative title referring to her performing a sex act with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew would later describe Caserta as "halfway between a
and a friend". According to an early 1990s statement by a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer she described (including the make and model of his car) in detail to her readers. According to Ellis Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar Caserta had been frequenting since Joplin was alive. Amburn quoted Caserta's friend Kim Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar: "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 biographers, Peggy Caserta was one of many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after the singer's death, while others died from overdoses. Big Brother guitarist James Gurley "finally got clean and sober in 1984," wrote Ellis Amburn. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995", wrote . In 2000, Caserta appeared on-camera for a segment about Joplin on .
Joplin, along with
of the , opened opportunities in the rock music business for future female singers.
Joplin's , with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast, by the San Francisco tattoo artist , was an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, often including colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin, often in the company of actor , frequented
on . The performer, well known to the store's employees, made a practice of putting aside vintage and other one-of-a-kind garments she favored on stage and off.
1971 song "Pearl" from their
album was a tribute. 's 1974 song "" is about Joplin. Likewise, lyricist
has commented that 's "Birdsong" from his first solo album,
(1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. 's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by
on her 1972
album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties", mentioned Joplin. A 1978 -penned song in French by English singer , "Ex fan des sixties" references Joplin alongside other disappeared "idols" such as ,
wrote a song called "Janis" from the album
At the 1976 , , whom Joplin admired greatly, commented on Joplin and referred to the 1975 documentary
that evidently was screened at the festival:
You know I made thirty-five albums, they bootlegged seventy. Oh, everybody took a chunk of me. And yesterday I went to see Janis Joplin's film here. And what distressed me the most, and I started to write a song about it, but I decided you weren't worthy. Because I figured that most of you are here for the festival. Anyway the point is it pained me to see how hard she worked. Because she got hooked into a thing, and it wasn't on drugs. She got hooked into a feeling and she played to corpses.
Simone also included Joplin in her song "Stars", and opened her act with a rendition of "".
The 1979 film
was loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname, and the title of —the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story.
earned a nomination for the
for her performance.
In 1987, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original , multi-image sculpture of Joplin by , was dedicated in .
In 1992, the first major biography of Janis in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister, Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Janis enjoyed being on the
Show and that Janis while growing up in Texas had difficulties with some people at school, but not the entire school. Laura stated that Janis was really enthusiastic after performing at
Joplin was inducted into the
in 1995, and was given a
in 2005. In November 2009, the 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 1965
with psychedelically designed , and a sheet of
designed by , designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. She was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series for 2009.
In the late 1990s, the musical play
was created with input from Janis's younger sister Laura plus Big Brother guitarist , with an aim to take it to . Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim and packed houses and was held over several times, the demanding role of the singing Janis attracting rock vocalists from relative unknowns to pop stars
and . A national tour followed.[]
In 2006, , band manager for , wrote about an experience he had with Janis in his book, Once Life Matters: A New Beginning. It seems Joplin loved the sound of Angelo's band after hearing them perform on numerous nights at Steve Paul's popular NYC nightclub, the Scene. When the band played at Ungano's Night Club in Manhattan in 1968, Joplin arrived with an entourage which included three professional tape recorders. She wanted to capture Raven's sound. That did not go over well with the members of the band, and they insisted Joplin not be allowed to record their show. The band's manager, Marty Angelo, asked club owner Nick Ungano to step in. Ungano did not want to mess with Joplin but reluctantly agreed. Ungano blamed the entire fiasco on Angelo telling Joplin that Raven's manager demanded she not be allowed to record. Ungano also told Joplin that Angelo was refusing to allow the band to go on stage until all recorders were removed from the club. "Manager?" Joplin screamed. She then exploded with a barrage of profanity, insisting that Ungano tell Angelo to "go fuck himself" and stormed out of the club along with her tape recorders. Angelo later became friends with Joplin and helped her acquire organist Richard Kermode for her "Kozmic Blues Band."
There have been many attempts at making a film about Joplin. On June 13, 2010, producer Wyck Godfrey said
would play the starring role in director ' biographical drama titled Janis Joplin: Get It While You Can. Previous attempts have included Piece of my Heart, wh The Gospel According to Janis, with director
and an untitled film thought to be an adaptation of Laura Joplin's
play about her sister, with the show's star, Laura Theodore, attached.
In 2013, Washington's
featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin puts on a concert for the audience, while telling stories of her past inspirations including , , and others. It is expected to move to Broadway's
in the fall.
Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star of the
on November 4, 2013. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of .
On August 8, 2014, the United States Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Janis Joplin, as part of its Music Icons Forever Stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park.
Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. , a.k.a. Alecia Moore, says Janis Joplin was her ultimate influence. Pink has performed a live version of a Janis Joplin medley, which can be seen on her 'Live in Europe' DVD. She talks about how Janis represented 'Freedom'. Pink is often described as possessing similar characteristics as Janis, such as: a hoarse, husky sounding voice and even the same laugh. Pink has once stated: "I would love to play her (Janis) in a movie".
spoke of Joplin's impact on her own musical prowess in an interview for Why Music Matters in a commercial against piracy:
I learnt about Janis from an anthology of female blues singers. Janis was a fascinating character who bridged the gap between psychedelic blues and soul scenes. She was so vulnerable, self-conscious and full of suffering. She tore herself apart yet on stage she was totally different. She was so unrestrained, so free, so raw and she wasn't afraid to wail. Her connection with the audience was really important. It seems to me the suffering and intensity of her performance go hand in hand. There was always a sense of longing, of searching for something. I think she really sums up the idea that soul is about putting your pain into something beautiful.
considers Joplin one of her idols, saying:
You could say that being yelled at by Janis Joplin was one of the great honors of my life. Early in my career, Lindsey Buckingham and I were in a band called Fritz. There were two gigs we played in San Francisco that changed everything for me - One was opening up for Jimi Hendrix, who was completely magical. The other was the time that we opened up for Janis at the San Jose Fairgrounds, around 1970.
It was a hot summer day, and things didn't start off well because the entire show was running late. That meant our set was running over. We were onstage and going over pretty well, when I turned and saw a furious Janis Joplin on the side of the stage, yelling at us. She was screaming something like, "What the fuck are you assholes doing? Get the hell off of my stage." Actually, she might have even been a little cruder than that — it was hard to hear.
But then Janis got up on that stage with her band, and this woman who was screaming at me only moments before suddenly became my new hero. Janis Joplin was not what anyone would call a great beauty, but she became beautiful because she made such a powerful and deep emotional connection with the audience. I didn't mind the feathers and the bell-bottom pants either. Janis didn't dress like anyone else, and she definitely didn't sing like anyone else.
Janis put herself out there completely, and her voice was not only strong and soulful, it was painfully and beautifully real. She sang in the great tradition of the rhythm & blues singers that were her heroes, but she brought her own dangerous, sexy rock & roll edge to every single song. She really gave you a piece of her heart. And that inspired me to find my own voice and my own style.
Janis Joplin recorded four fully conceived studio albums in her career. Her first two albums were recorded with and fully credited to
and the later two were solo albums. Previously unreleased studio and live material was added to these albums on re-releaseand also released on the compilation
in 1982. Joplin's early performances from when she was a folk-blues singer have been released on several well-received compilations through the years, one such compilation is the nine disc . In 2012,
were released giving an insight into her creative process.
As a popular psychedelic act of the late 1960s, many of Joplin's live concerts with Big Brother were professionally recorded and have been released on albums like
Though most of her concerts were recorded during her solo career, few have been officially released, resulting in heavy bootlegging.[]
(1968) 2x Platinum
(1969) Platinum
(1971) 4x Platinum
Release date
Mainstream Records
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Contains 2 extra single tracks
Big Brother and the Holding Company
1967, CD 1999
Contains 2 extra single tracks
Cheap Thrills
1968, CD 1999
Contains 4 extra tracks
ASIN: B000007TSP
Kozmic Blues Band
Release date
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!
1969, CD 1999
Contains 3 extra tracks
Release date
posthumous, 4x Multi-Platinum RIAA
1971, CD unknown date
1971, CD 1999
Contains 4 extra tracks
1971, 2CD 2005
CD1 – 6 other extra tracks
CD2 – full selection from The Festival Express Tour, 3 venues
The Pearl Sessions
Big Brother & the Holding Company / Full Tilt Boogie
Release date
Later collections
Release date
ASIN B, 7x Multi-Platinum RIAA
Columbia Records
ASIN: B000W44S8E
ASIN: B000LYA9X8
Columbia Legacy
3 discs – ASIN: BP
Columbia Legacy
ASIN: BA, Gold RIAA
The Collection
ASIN: B000BM6ATW
Live at Woodstock: August 19, 1969
Box of Pearls
5 Discs – ASIN: B0009YNSK6
Super Hits
ASIN: B00005EBIN
Essential Janis Joplin
ASIN: B00007MB6Y
Very Best of Janis Joplin
(as member of Big Brother & The Holding Company)
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Cheap Thrills
(as a solo artist)
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!
Joplin In Concert
Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits
Farewell Song
Super Hits
(as member of Big Brother & The Holding Company)
(as a solo artist)
Get It While You Can
Monterey Pop (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969)
Janis (1974)
Janis: The Way She Was (1974)
Comin’ Home (1988)
Woodstock - The Lost Performances (1991)
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director’s Cut) (1994)
Festival Express (2003)
Nine Hundred Nights (2004)
The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout
Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005)
This is Tom Jones ( 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)
. Rolling Stone 2010.
Echols, Alice (February 15, 2000). Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin. .  .
Jacobson, Laurie (October 1984). Hollywood Heartbreak: The Tragic and Mysterious Deaths of Hollywood's Most Remarkable Legends. .  .
Amburn, Ellis (October 1992). Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin : A Biography. .  .
Caserta, Peggy (October 1980). Going Down With Janis. .  .
Friedman, Myra (September 15, 1992). Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. .  .
(May 5, 1998). . Washington Post 2008.
. Classic..
Paytress, Mark (March 1994). "Janis Joplin. Mark Paytress assesses Columbia's three-CD 'Janis' retrospective".
175: 140–141.
interviewed on the
Dalton, David (August 21, 1991). Piece Of My Heart. .  .
Joplin, Laura (August 16, 2005). Love, Janis. .  .
Willett, Edward. Janis Joplin: Take Another Little Piece of My Heart. Enslow Publishers, Inc. p. 55.  .
McNally, Dennis (2002). A Long Strange Trip: The inside History of the Grateful Dead. Broadway Books.  .
(1989), , , p. 106,  
Joplin, Laura (1992), ,
(): 182,  
Adler, Renata (December 27, 1968). "Screen: Upbeat M 'Monterey Pop' Views the Rock Scene". The New York Times. p. 44.
Rosen, Craig (1996). The Billboard Book of Number One Albums: The Inside Story Behind Pop Music's Blockbuster Records.  .
. Allmusic 2011.
Segraves, John (October 21, 1968). "Janis Joplin Overwhelms". Evening Star Washington, D.C. pp. B6.
Zito, Tom (21 March 1975). "'Janis': Purified Joplin". Washington Post. pp. B11.
Townshend, Pete (2012). Who I am: a memoir. HarperCollins Publishers. p. 179.
GlennGarvin - [] (). . Janisjoplin.net.
"Dick Cavett TV. Interview (1970)". . .
Paul Hendrickson, "", , May 5, 1998.
Albertson, Bessie, p. 277.
Miller, Danny (January 19, 2007). . Huffington Post 2008.
Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone, September 30, 1999
October 5, 1970, front page.
Richardson, Derk (April–May 1986). "Books in Brief". .
Cooke, John. Janis J A Performance Diary . Acid Test. p. 126.  .
Acord, Deb (November 10, 2006). "Who knew: Mommy has a tattoo". .
. webheights.net.
Box of Rain: Lyrics
by Robert Hunter, Penguin Books, 1993
Performed by
in her 1972 album . Baez wrote the song "Blessed Are...", from her 1971 album of the same name, as a tribute to Joplin.
Elan, Priya. , , August 7, 2010. .
Maltin, Leonard (September 24, 2002). Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie And Video Guide. .  .
Applebome, Peter (January 21, 1988). . New York Times.
James, Gary (1992).
, August 11, 2009
. . Archived from
on May 9, .
Impact Publishers, ,
Yamato, Jen. , , June 13, 2010. .
"," Washington Post, June 26, 2013.
Harp, Justin (). . digitalspy.co.uk.
. <. Why Music Matters 2013.
CD Liner Notes - Big Brother and the Holding Company's (Joplin's band) Live at Winterland '68
. . NY: Warner Books, 1992. .
Albertson, Chris, Bessie (Revised and Expanded Edition), New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. .
Caserta, Peggy. . Dell: 1974. ASIN: B000NSBNMI.
. . NY: Da Capo Press, 1991. .
. . NY: Henry Holt, 1999. .
Friedman, Myra. Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. NY: William Morrow, 1973. .
Friedman, Myra. , updated edition. Three Rivers Press, 1992. .
(1997). . Los Angeles: AMOK. &#160;.
Joplin, Laura. . NY: Villard Books, 1992. .
Stieven-Taylor, Alison. . Sydney: Rockpool Publishing, 2007. .
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