Biography
The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis
Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with
her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to
stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company,
she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though
commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't
always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians,
her best recordings, with both Big Brother
and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era.
She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her
assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying
on-stage presence. Joplin was raised in the small town of Port Arthur,
TX, and much of her subsequent personal difficulties and unhappiness
has been attributed to her inability to fit in with the expectations of
the conservative community. She'd been singing blues and folk music
since her teens, playing on occasion in the mid-'60s with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. There are a few live pre-Big Brother recordings (not issued until after her death), reflecting the inspiration of early blues singers like Bessie Smith,
that demonstrate she was well on her way to developing a personal style
before hooking up with the band. She had already been to California
before moving there permanently in 1966, when she joined a struggling
early San Francisco psychedelic group, Big Brother & the Holding Company.
Although their loose, occasionally sloppy brand of bluesy psychedelia
had some charm, there can be no doubt that Joplin — who initially
didn't even sing lead on all of the material — was primarily
responsible for lifting them out of the ranks of the ordinary. She made
them a hit at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where her stunning
version of "Ball and Chain" (perhaps her very best performance) was
captured on film. After a debut on the Mainstream label, Big Brother signed a management deal with Albert Grossman and moved on to Columbia. Their second album, Cheap Thrills,
topped the charts in 1968, but Joplin left the band shortly afterward,
enticed by the prospects of stardom as a solo act. Joplin's first
album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, was recorded with the Kozmic Blues Band, a unit that included horns and retained just one of the musicians that had played with her in Big Brother (guitarist Sam Andrew).
Although it was a hit, it wasn't her best work; the new band, though
more polished musically, was not nearly as sympathetic accompanists as Big Brother,
purveying a soul-rock groove that could sound forced. That's not to say
it was totally unsuccessful, boasting one of her signature tunes in
"Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)." For years, Joplin's life had been a
roller coaster of drug addiction, alcoholism, and volatile personal
relationships, documented in several biographies. Musically, however,
things were on the upswing shortly before her death, as she assembled a
better, more versatile backing outfit, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, for her final album, Pearl (ably produced by Paul Rothchild). Joplin was sometimes criticized for screeching at the expense of subtlety, but Pearl
was solid evidence of her growth as a mature, diverse stylist who could
handle blues, soul, and folk-rock. "Mercedes Benz," "Get It While You
Can," and Kris Kristofferson's
"Me and Bobby McGee" are some of her very best tracks. Tragically, she
died before the album's release, overdosing on heroin in a Hollywood
hotel in October 1970. "Me and Bobby McGee" became a posthumous number
one single in 1971, and thus the song with which she is most frequently
identified.
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