Port Arthur, Texas January 19, 1943
Janis Joplin is born.
From a very early age, Janis loved music and loved to sing.
Her parents, Dorothy and Seth, were devout Christians and her family regularly attended
church, where Janis also loved to sing.
Here she is in her church’s youth choir.
Janis had two younger siblings, Laura and Michael, but her parents seemed to be more
worried about Janis than them, especially after she struggled at school.
Janis didn’t hang out with the jocks like Jimmy Johnson.
Yep, Jimmy Johnson, the future Pro Football Hall of Famer, was her classmate at Thomas
Jefferson High School.
No, she hung out with the outcasts, the freaks.
Janis later recalled that she was often bullied in school and had a difficult time fitting
in due to getting really bad acne and being overweight.
But also, she didn’t WANT to fit in.
She rejected the fashion of the time.
Heck, if ANYTHING was too popular, she rejected it.
Despite not fitting in, she could sing, man.
She could sing like few others.
It was also in high school when she really got into blues and folk music.
She listened to singers like Bessie Smith and Odetta.
Joplin graduated high school in 1960, briefly attending nearby Lamar University, before
then going on to the University of Texas in Austin.
By that time, Joplin was basically a Beatnik, part of a social movement that was anti-materialistic,
anti-consumerism, nonconformist, and experimented with all kinds of stuff like drugs, sex, and
living off the beaten path.
But uh…yeah…she was in Texas.
Despite Austin being a fairly nonconforming place, Joplin continued to get harassed and
bullied there for being different.
She rarely went to class.
Instead, people often saw her around campus carrying around an auto-harp.
The University of Texas newspaper, The Daily Texan, even ran a profile of her in the July
27, 1962 issue with the headline “She Dares to Be Different.”
It said, “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."
Indeed, by this time music was easily her biggest focus.
She began performing around town with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys.
Her voice was raspy but powerful.
Even back then, she had a commanding stage presence.
Meanwhile, she had begun writing songs.
She recorded her first song, “What Good Can Drinkin’ Do,” in December 1962 at
a fellow student’s house.
Around that time, a University of Texas-affiliated fraternity sponsored an “Ugliest Man on
Campus” contest.
Joplin was one of those nominated.
This was incredibly embarrassing for her, and is probably a big reason why she dropped
out of college and hit the road.
She hitchhiked with her friend Chet Helms to San Francisco.
Helms, by the way, later became famous as the posterboy of San Francisco’s “Summer
of Love.”
By the time Joplin finally settled down in San Francisco later that year, it was clear
that she was heavily addicted to both alcohol and amphetamines.
She also had begun experimenting with psychedelics.
She even had begun taking meth and heroin.
On February 21, 1963, Berkeley police arrested her for shoplifting.
Still, she kept writing songs and performing.
She became romantically involved with a woman named Jae Whittaker, and then became romantically
involved with a man named Peter de Blanc, and the two even planned to get married, but
that didn’t work out.
By 1965, Joplin’s friends had become very worried about her drug use.
They raised money to send her back home to Port Arthur, Texas, in hopes that she would
get healthier.
When she did make it back to Port Arthur, she weighed just 88 pounds.
Her parents helped her return to health, and for a while Joplin DID become sober and even
started therapy.
She returned to Lamar University.
On weekends, Joplin would drive up to Austin to perform solo gigs…just her singing and
playing an acoustic guitar.
For the rest of 1965 and into the next year, she recorded seven new songs.
Meanwhile, a burgeoning music scene was happening back in San Francisco.
Joplin’s old friend Chet had begun promoting music and managing a band called Big Brother
and the Holding Company, and soon realized that they needed a strong singer.
And guess what?
He had the perfect singer in mind to lead the band- Janis Joplin.
He reached out to Joplin to see if she wanted to join the band.
She accepted, officially joining the band and first publicly performing with them at
the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco on June 10, 1966.
They played lots of shows that summer.
In July, Joplin moved into a house with all her bandmates and other musicians.
In August, Big Brother and the Holding Company played several shows in Chicago, but they
found themselves stranded there after the promoter ran out of money and couldn’t pay
them.
Desperate for cash, the band signed a deal with Mainstream Records and began recording
with them there, but no one seemed to like how the recordings turned out, so they headed
back to San Francisco.
The band ultimately went to Los Angeles for three days in December to record new stuff
for the label.
Soon after this, Joplin became romantically involved with Country Joe McDonald and she
moved in with him.
Meanwhile, the band had relentlessly played shows despite having not much success.
That’d all change at the Monterey International Pop Festival.
On June 17, 1967 Joplin and the band made a huge impression on the crowd, and the concert
organizers were so impressed that they asked them to play again the next day.
For that set, Donn Alan Pennebaker caught it all on film, and later featured their performance
of the song “Ball ‘n’ Chain” in a popular documentary called Monterey Pop.
Based on the momentum of Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Monterey International
Pop Festival performances, Mainstream Records released their debut, self-titled studio album
on August 23, 1967.
Even though the album was just a minor hit, it was the first time a wider audience heard
Joplin’s powerful vocals.
The song “Down on Me” did get some radio airplay.
Unfortunately, by this time Joplin had relapsed and was once again taking heavy drugs.
That didn’t stop her from staying productive with her music, though.
The band continued to perform regularly.
In November, they signed a deal with Albert Grossman, who also managed Jimi Hendrix.
Grossman soon got the band a record deal with Columbia Records.
In February 1968, Big Brother and the Holding Company began its first tour of the East Coast.
On April 7, they played a show to honor Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated
three days prior.
That show also featured Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, and a bunch of other big time rock
stars.
On April 12 and 13, they played a couple shows at the Winter Ballroom in San Francisco.
Recordings of these shows eventually made up the album Live at Winterland ‘68, which
Columbia released 30 years later.
At some point after this, promoters began referring to the band as “Janis Joplin and
Big Brother and the Holding Company” since Joplin was now a big reason why more and more
people were coming to their shows.
They began touring the East Coast a second time in June.
Meanwhile, the band had been recording with producer John Simon new songs for what would
become their second studio album, Cheap Thrills, released by Columbia on August 12, 1968.
Cheap Thrills was a critical and commercial success.
It reached number one on the Billboard album charts and quickly sold around one million
copies.
Cheap Thrills featured the hit song “Piece of My Heart,” originally a hit by the soul
singer Erma Franklin.
It ended up being Joplin’s biggest radio hit.
When recording Cheap Thrills, though, Joplin had grown frustrated with how many mistakes
her band was making.
Plus, she wanted a bigger role with the songwriting process.
On September 1, 1968, right when Big Brother and the Holding Company were entering the
mainstream, Joplin announced that she was leaving the band.
Despite this, Joplin continued to tour with them that fall as journalists praised her
performances.
Her last official performance with Big Brother and the Holding Company was a concert for
Chet Helms in San Francisco on December 1.
After this, Joplin created a new backup group known as the Kozmic Blues Band.
It included former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew.
Her stuff with the Kozmic Blues Band was, of course, more bluesy, but also more influenced
by R&B and funk.
They began playing shows in the spring of 1969, and even toured Europe.
By this time, she had been in several romantic relationships with both men and women.
She also, by this time, had become somewhat of an unlikely rock icon and even sex symbol.
On July 18, 1969, she’d make the first of her three appearances on The Dick Cavett Show.
In August, Joplin told her band they had a gig in Woodstock, New York.
Heading there, the band apparently really did think it was just another gig.
But as it turns out, it was maybe the most iconic music festival in history.
Yep, they played THE Woodstock, although it was 2 in the morning before they finally got
on stage to a very tired audience on August 17, 1969.
Meanwhile, the Kozmic Blues Band had been recording stuff.
Columbia released their debut album, and Joplin’s third album, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues
Again Mama!, on September 11, 1969.
It wasn’t as big of a hit as Cheap Thrills, but it did feature the hits “Kozmic Blues”
and “To Love Somebody.”
The Kozmic Blues Band went on tour again that fall across the country.
On November 16, 1969, Joplin got arrested a second time in her life, but for quite a
strange reason.
At a show in Tampa Bay, Florida, fans rushed the stage to a point where police officers
there thought it was unsafe.
After the police tried to get the crowds to disperse, Joplin cussed out the cops, telling
them to stop.
Well those cops arrested her as soon as the show ended and charged her with “vulgar
and indecent language.”
On November 27, 1969, Joplin and her band performed with Ike and Tina Turner and the
Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
During Tina and Ike’s set, Joplin, who apparently was pretty drunk and stoned, jumped up on
stage to join them for an impromptu duet.
Joplin was a pretty big Tina Turner fan.
Soon after that show, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up.
In February 1970, Joplin went to Brazil and stopped using drugs again.
There she met an American tourist named David Niehaus and they became romantically involved.
Unfortunately, when Joplin returned to the United States, she began using heroin again
and Niehaus left her because of it.
Joplin briefly dated country music legend Kris Kristofferson after this, and then became
engaged to a novelist named Seth Morgan.
Apparently Joplin met Morgan when he was delivering cocaine to her house.
Around this time, Joplin formed a new band eventually called the Full Tilt Boogie Band.
They began touring in May 1970 and toured for basically the whole summer.
Speaking of that summer, that was when Rolling Stone journalist David Dalton joined Joplin
for a bit, famously recalling an experience where all kinds of random stuff fell out of
her purse when she was trying to find cigarettes.
Dalton wrote down the stuff that fell out of her purse: an antique cigarette holder,
cassettes of Johnny Cash and Otis Redding, several motel and hotel room keys, and an
empty bottle of Southern Comfort.
Apparently the producers of Southern Comfort appreciated Joplin drinking their alcoholic
beverage so much that they sent her this free coat.
Anyway, the tour was a huge success.
Joplin’s last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band was August 12, 1970.
They recorded new songs in Los Angeles with producer Paul Rothchild, who famously worked
with the Doors.
During that time, Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood and…never
checked out.
On October 4, 1970, her road manager found her dead on the floor of her room.
Although no one knows exactly how she died, heroin was definitely a factor.
She likely either accidentally overdosed or hurt her head due to the effect of the drug.
Janis Joplin was just 27 years old when she passed away, and news of her death indeed
surprised her fans.
Jimi Hendrix, also 27, died just 16 days earlier.
Alan Wilson of the band Canned Heat, also 27, died a month earlier.
This trend ended up referring to them being called the first members of the “27 Club,”
a group of famous musicians who have all died since the 1960s at the age of 27 that also
includes Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.
On January 11, 1971, Columbia released Joplin’s final studio album, Pearl.
It peaked at number one on the Billboard albums chart and eventually sold more than four million
copies.
It also featured some of Joplin’s most iconic songs, including “Cry Baby,” “Me and
Bobby McGee,” and “Mercedes Benz.”
Pearl is still considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time.
In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Ten years later, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Despite her short life, today Janis Joplin remains one of the most widely-known and widely
respected rock singers of all-time.
More than 31 million copies of her albums have been sold worldwide.
Most of those sold after her death and as compilations.
Perhaps more than any other singer in history, she is the epitome of the free-spirited hippie
who represented her era so darn well.
That said, she never really fit into any category.
Her style and her voice were incredibly unique and authentic.
Her fans have always easily connected with her, first and foremost, because she was…real…she
was them.
She was a powerful voice for the underdogs…the freaks….the outcasts…and I’d say nearly
all of us can relate to that.
Even today, Janis Joplin remains a breath of fresh air.
So what’s your favorite Janis Joplin song?
Who else would you like for me to cover for this series?
Let me know down below.
Although, I must say, I’m probably gonna cover Michael Jackson next whether you like
it or not.
But let me know what to cover after that.
Thanks for watching!