Janis Joplin was born on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas. Heavily influenced by singer Bessie Smith, Joplin began singing blues and folk music with friends in high school. Those years were not happy ones: she was overweight, shy, insecure and suffered from terrible acne. She would later reminisce about her classmates both bullying and ostracizing her. After graduating in 1960 she enrolled at the University of Texas. A profile in the college newspaper read: “She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they’re more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere….”
In January 1963 Joplin dropped out of college and hitchhiked with friend and future music promotor Chet Holmes to San Francisco. She got a job singing, a cappella, Bessie Smith songs at The Coffee Gallery in North Beach[1], where she met future bandmates Peter Albin and Dave Getz. She also met Joe McDonald of the band Country Joe and the Fish and the two moved in together in an apartment at 122 Lyon Street. Joplin began using amphetamines and drinking heavily (her beverage of choice was Southern Comfort) and just a year after moving to the City, weighing 88 pounds, friends raised money to buy her a bus ticket back to Texas. She returned home and got clean and sober, but struggled with the idea that she could succeed in the music business without drugs. She enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University and sang at nightclubs in the Austin area. She recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar that were released as an album 30 years later in 1995. After a brief engagement that did not come to fruition, her friend Chet Holmes, now a successful San Francisco promoter, convinced Joplin to return to San Francisco and join the band Big Brother and the Holding Company with old friends Peter Albin and Dave Getz. Joplin returned to the City on June 4, 1966. A week later the band performed their first concert together at the Avalon Ballroom at 1244 Sutter.
In July the band moved to a house in Lagunitas in Marin County and hung out with The Grateful Dead[2] who lived two miles away. Big Brother practiced at 1090 Page and performed at small venues across the City, releasing an album. In June 1967, at the start of the Summer of Love, Joplin and her girlfriend, Peggy Caserta, moved into a second floor apartment in a 4-story pink Queen Anne Victorian at 635 Ashbury (now referred to as the Joplin House). For the next 18 months Joplin immersed herself in the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene, wearing her hair super frizzed, thrift store clothes, large granny glasses and lots of bangles without a bra or makeup. She could be found under a tree on Golden Gate Park’s Hippie Hill[3] singing along to her guitar.
Big Brother, and Joplin in particular, gained national fame when they performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. The audience was blown away by Joplin’s sometimes soft and husky and sometimes explosive mezzo-soprano voice and incredible range. Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas can be seen in the audience with her mouth open during the performance and then mouthing “Wow!” afterwards[4]. Soon after the festival, the band signed with Columbia Records.
In early 1968 Big Brother was one of the bands that performed at Martin Luther King Jr.’s wake in New York. On July 31th of that year the band had a nationwide television appearance on ABC’s This Morning, a variety show hosted by Dick Cavett. Media coverage began focusing on Joplin, with Time Magazine writing, “she is probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement.” The band released their second album, Cheap Thrills, which sold over a million copies in the first month after its release. The band’s billing changed to Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company, and fellow band members became resentful. After touring the United States in the fall of 1968, Joplin left Big Brother. She moved to Larkspur, California and formed a new band, the Kozmic Blues. By the following year she was a daily heroin user and her performances began to suffer. At 2AM on Sunday, August 17th, she performed at Woodstock. After having been stuck backstage for 10 hours because of delays, she was very high and very drunk by the time she went on stage. Her voice was hoarse and scratchy and she was stumbling, though she stayed afterwards to watch the remaining bands. In September of 1969 Kozmic Blues Album was released and the band began touring. In November Joplin was arrested and fined in Tampa for vulgar language. The band’s last concert was at Madison Square Garden a few weeks later, after which Kozmic Blues broke up.
In February, 1970 Joplin moved to Brazil to once again get clean and sober. She returned to the States a few months later with a new boyfriend and formed a new band, Full Tilt Boogie. The band almost immediately went on national tour. While Joplin was able to abstain from drugs, she started heavily drinking again. After their last performance on August 12, 1970 in Boston, the band moved to Los Angeles to record an album. Joplin moved into the Landmark Motor Hotel, a known hangout for drug users and drug dealers. On October 1st Joplin recorded her last song, Mercedez Benz. Three days later she was found dead in her hotel room from an accidental heroin overdose: she was 27 years old. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered into the Pacific Ocean. In her will she left $2,500 for friends to throw a party. On October 26th that party was held in San Anselmo, where The Grateful Dead performed.
The album Pearl was released in January 1971, three months after Joplin’s death. It peaked at Number 1 on Billboard 200, where it remained for nine weeks.
Janice Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013. The 1979 movie The Rose, starring Bette Midler, was loosely based on Joplin’s life.
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[1] North Beach: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5026 [2] The Grateful Dead: story coming August 9th [3] Golden Gate Park: story coming April 4th [4] You can watch this performance on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X1zFnyEe3nE
