Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer, songwriter and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004,[1] and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
anis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas on January 19, 1943,[3] to Seth Joplin (1910–87), an engineer at Texaco, and Dorothy (née East) Joplin (1913–98), a registrar at a business college. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the Church of Christ.[4] 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."[5]
As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by African-American blues artistsBessie Smith and Leadbelly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer.[6] She began singing in the local choir and expanded her listening to blues singers such as Odetta and Big Mama Thornton.
Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. While atThomas Jefferson High School, she stated that she was mostly shunned.[6] Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers."[5] As a teen, she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which required dermabrasion.[5][7][8] Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak" or "creep."[5]
Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texasduring the summer[7] and later the University of Texas at Austin, though she did not complete her studies.[9] The campus newspaper ran a profile of her in 1962 headlined "She Dares To Be Different."[9]
Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after theBeat poets. Her very first song recorded on tape, at the home of a fellow student in December 1962, was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do."[10] She left Texas for San Francisco in 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 percussion instrument). This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk," "Trouble In Mind," "Kansas City Blues," "Hesitation Blues," "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues," and was later released as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape.
Around this time her drug use increased, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroinuser.[3][6][7] She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite beverage was Southern Comfort.
In the spring of 1965, Joplin's friends, noticing the physical effects of her amphetamine habit (she was described as "skeletal"[6] and "emaciated"[3]), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. In May 1965, Joplin's friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return home.[3] Back in Port Arthur, she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, began wearing relatively modest dresses, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as asociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman. Joplin became engaged to a man who visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but the man terminated plans for the marriage soon after.[8]
From : Wikipedia
