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Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur (TX) in 1943. As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Leadbelly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing in the church choir and expanded her listening to singers such as Odetta, Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton.
Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. In high school she was mostly shunned: "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers." As a teen, she became overweight, and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names. She graduated in 1960.
Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and in part after the Beat poets. Her first song recorded on tape at the home of a fellow University of Texas student in December 1962 was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do?"
She left Texas for San Francisco in January 1963, living in North Beach and later Haight-Ashbury. In 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, further accompanied by Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter as a percussion instrument. Around this time, her drug use increased, and she acquired a reputation as a meth and occasional heroin user. She also used LSD, peyote, psilocybin and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite booze was Southern Comfort.
In early 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the physical effects of her intravenous meth habit, persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. Back home Joplin changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in Beaumont. She commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar.
In 1966, Joplin's vocal style attracted the attention of the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. Joplin joined Big Brother in June 1966.
Joplin avoided drug use for several weeks, enjoining band mate Dave Getz to promise that using needles would not be allowed in their rehearsal space, in her apartment, or in the homes of her band mates whom she visited. In July, the band moved to a house in Lagunitas, where they lived communally. They often partied with the Grateful Dead, who lived less than two miles away.
In August, during a four-week engagement in Chicago, the group signed a deal with Mainstream Records. Joplin relapsed into drinking when she and her band mates joined some alcoholic hipsters. The band recorded tracks in a Chicago studio, but the owner refused to pay their airfare back to San Francisco. They drove from Chicago to Lagunitas with very little money, and Joplin relapsed into intravenous drug use.
In 1967, Big Brother began playing major clubs in San Francisco. The studio album recorded in Chicago was released in August, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival.
For her first major studio recording, Janis played a key role in the arrangement and production of the recordings that would become the second album, "Cheap Thrills." During the recording, Joplin was the first person to enter the studio and the last person to leave. The album had a raw quality and introduced the immortal "Piece of My Heart."
After splitting from Big Brother, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians influenced by the Stax-Volt R&B bands of the Sixties. The "Kozmic Blues" album, released in September 1969, did not match the success of "Cheap Thrills." Reviews were mixed. However, the recording quality and engineering of the record as well as the musicianship were considered superior to her previous release, and critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's vocal talents.
Joplin appeared at Woodstock. Despite her not even knowing of the festival's existence until a few days earlier, the promoters advertised her as a headliner. She became one of the main attractions of the historic concert. 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 from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became incredibly nervous. 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 and drank.
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, and the audience was so pleased that they cheered her for an encore. Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival.
Janis went straight to her parents in Port Arthur following Woodstock. She was vibrant and happy after coming home. She told her family how great it was, but her mother and father remained distant on the subject as they did not really understand hippies.
In February 1970, Janis went to Brazil where she went cold turkey, but upon returning to the US, she was back on the needle. She formed the Full Tilt Boogie Band, made up of Canadian musicians, and exchanged heroin for alcohol. Her last great act was to buy a headstone for the grave of Bessie Smith. Her third album, "Pearl," produced this single when Janis and Kris Kristofferson were briefly lovers. Her last recording was the immortal "Mercedes Benz."
When Janis failed to show up for a recording session, her road manager drove to the motel where she was staying and found her dead from an overdose of heroin. It marked the loss of a great talent.