Good music: Janis Joplin. Janis Joplin - the history of the songs “Piece Of My Heart” (1968), “Mercedes Benz” (1971) and other hits

Of all the rock stars, Janis Joplin is perhaps the only one whose fate was particularly tragic. Her life is full of love failures, outrages, drinking, drugs. And behind all this unsightly facade only wish: to love and to be loved.

Janis Joplin was born in 1943 in Texas. In her family and surroundings, traditions were observed extremely strictly. And she will very soon rebel against them, already at the lyceum she declares herself as a rebellious person.

Texas at that time was a racist state, and her comrades did not understand how she dared to speak out in defense of blacks.

Janice was not attractive, and she also had weight problems. Out of a sense of contradiction, and also because her appearance did not allow her to play the card of femininity, she rushes to the other extreme and pretends to be a girl with boyish habits: she dresses only in trousers and a shirt, does not wear makeup, swears and does not go to any compromises.

“For these reasons,” recalls one of her friends, “other students bullied and persecuted her. She behaved like a rebel at a time when even adults got into serious trouble if they tried to violate established procedures. And it was a girl."

At the age of 18, Janice goes to Los Angeles for a few days and ends up in a neighborhood where a colony of hippies has settled. From there she returns delighted. “I finally met people like me,” she tells her friends.

At that time, the hippie movement in the United States was gaining more and more momentum. Hippies protested against the Vietnam War and rejected all the values ​​of capitalist society.

Janice immediately joined this movement, accepting not only the views of the hippies, but also their excessive passion for drugs and sex. “For a long time,” recalls one of her friends, “Janice was very timid in the presence of boys. I think she had a complex because of her appearance. She communicated with them, but refused any rapprochement. Then, when she started smoking marijuana, she felt “she became liberated and began to give herself to anyone who wore trousers. It seems to me that in this way she took revenge on other girls who had had boyfriends for a long time, while no one even approached her.”

Her sexual exploits became the talk of the small town, where even now people recall one evening when Janice gave herself to all the members of the local football team in honor of their victory.

Janice began singing with a local band and taking more and more drugs. She smoked marijuana, took LSD and ingested huge amounts of Seconal. “Some evenings,” recalls Julie Paul, “she would completely lose control of herself under the influence of drugs. She would run out into the street in the middle of the night and throw herself in front of cars or bang her head against walls.” When the euphoria wore off, Janice invariably fell into severe depression, since nothing in the world could hide the truth: she was rejected by everyone. She was alone.

Without any regret, she leaves Texas and goes to San Francisco. For Janice it was heaven on earth.

After all, the city was experiencing a cultural social revolution. Young people who came here from all over the world tried to build a new society whose motto would be “Love and Peace.” The guys wore long hair, girls - long colorful skirts. Sex and drugs were more relaxed here than in Texas. It was also a center for music.

Janice immediately felt at home. She joined a group and began performing in local clubs until a manager noticed her and recorded her first disc.

“Janice was extraordinarily talented,” recalls one of her guitarists. “The only problem was that she saw life as an endless party. All she thought about was drinking and making love. Sometimes she was great on stage, and sometimes she wasn’t.” a complete zero. The audience never knew whether Janice could sing or not."

But in 1965, Janice suddenly realizes that she is physically deteriorating. She decides to leave this “paradise”, return to Texas and get married. She met a young Canadian who introduced himself to her as a pharmacist (he founded a drug import company just to be able to get drugs). With short hair and a suit and tie, he was the antithesis of a long-haired hippie. Therefore, he seemed to Janice as a savior, sent to pull her out of the hell in which she lived. Janice spent a year in Port Arthur preparing for marriage.

The groom visited her several times, the date had already been set. Janice's mother made her wedding dress, but on the day of the ceremony the groom did not show up at church.

For Janice it was a terrible blow. She, who deep down longed for a normal life, reacted with the frightening anger of a suicide. She decided that life was a complete deception, and plunged headlong into the search for entertainment. She returned to San Francisco, became a regular client of lesbian establishments and turned to hard drugs.

Professionally, she was lucky. She landed a contract, and her first album immediately put her on par with the biggest stars. Janice's powerful, excitingly hoarse voice captivated the audience.

She spent the money that began to come to her on alcohol and drugs. At the Monters festival, where she was a star, she met Jimi Hendrix. “They instantly recognized each other,” recalls her drummer. “They were wasting their lives in the same way and, in addition, they were both sexually hungry.” Jimmy and Janice spent the night together and met several more times. They could have started a real love story, but after three weeks Janice decided to break up with Hendrix because of his cruelty; he loved to beat his partners. Jimmy could even be dangerous and on several occasions was forced to pay large sums to his casual mistresses so that they would not sue him. It was with Jimmy that Janice discovered and fell in love with heroin.

After Hendrix, Janice also had a love affair with rock star Jim Morrison. “Jim and Janice slept together, although they couldn’t stand each other,” says the owner of the club where they met. “They argued endlessly.”

Janice and the orchestra went on tour for many months. Every evening after the concert she went to some nightclub and looked for a lover or mistress for the night. Often her searches were unsuccessful, and she was imbued with envy of her comrades, who had no shortage of choices. One day in an Italian restaurant in New York, she exploded: “It’s not fair, guys! You always have the girls you want, and I have to go around trying to find a guy who isn’t afraid to fuck me.” She turned to her secretary and ordered, “Go ahead and bring me the first cute guy you see.”

A quarter of an hour later the secretary returned with a long-haired guy wearing an African coat and speaking with a British accent. Janice looked him up and down. “Not bad,” she approved. “Sit down, handsome. Do you know who I am? Janis Joplin. Who are you?” The guy replied: "Eric Clapton."

Beginning in 1969, Janice's circle began to seriously worry about her. She drank and injected more and more. Performances had to be canceled regularly because she was unable to get on stage.

In 1970, Janice met a man who proposed marriage to her. His name was Seth Morgan, he was a dealer, and they met when he brought her cocaine. Janice fell in love with him and began to make plans: they would give up drugs, get married, and she would break away from the world of rock and roll. She was interested in cinema, and at that moment a young artist, director Jack Nicholson, offered her a role in the film. Janice signed up for the course dramatic skill, but never appeared there. Her relationship with Seth was taking an undesirable turn for her. He was absent all the time, and she finally realized that he was not going to marry her.

The 4th of October 1970 After a recording session at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, she locked herself in her room and injected a huge dose of heroin. Janice died quickly, but was not found until eighteen hours later. The investigator stated that death was the result of an overdose. “The dose is so huge that it is obvious suicide,” he said.

Janice Quotes:
To be an intellectual means to ask yourself many questions without finding answers to them. You can devote your whole life to some idea - and still return home alone...

Being free is hard, but it's worth it!

Hippies believe that the world can become a better place. The beatniks know that it won’t get better, and they say: let this world go to hell, let’s party and have a good time

On stage I make love to 25,000 people, and I return home completely alone...

Why am I living? What am I for? What is the meaning of my existence

I think I think too much. That's why I drink!

What a star I am to you! After the concert, exhausted, I come to the dressing room, my hair is disheveled, my clothes are dirty, my underwear is torn... I have a terrible migraine, I can’t find my other shoe. I have no one to go home to, and I, drunk, beg my manager to give me a lift to an empty apartment. Does this happen with stars?..

5 chord selections

Biography

early years

Janis Lyn Joplin was born on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, the daughter of Seth Joplin, a Texaco worker (with his brother and sister, Michael and Laura). At school (Thomas Jefferson High School, Port Arthur) Janice was an exemplary student, exhibited her own drawings in local library and generally complied with the norms of social expectations. However, she had no friends: she communicated exclusively with guys. One of them, a football player named Grant Lyons, introduced her to Leadbelly's work, making her a passionate fan of this music. Soon Janice began performing the blues herself. Psychological problems(associated mainly with excess weight) began in adolescence: Janice had a hard time being bullied by her classmates and suffered from hatred of herself and the world around her. During these years, the explosive character of Janis Joplin was formed, who “stylized” herself after her blues heroines (Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Odetta).

In 1960, after graduating from high school, Janice entered Lamar College (Beaumont, Texas); She spent the summer of 1961 in Venice (Los Angeles area) among the beatniks, and in the fall, returning to Texas, she entered the university, where she appeared on stage for the first time, demonstrating expressive vocals with a three-octave operating range.

Janis Joplin's first band was the Waller Creek Boys, featuring R. Powell St. John, who wrote songs for the 13th Floor Elevators (and later founded Mother Earth). Here the first hoarseness appeared in her voice, which later grew to incredible proportions. The break with the student environment occurred in January '63. After one of the university newspapers awarded her the title of “the scariest of the guys,” Janice packed her things and hitched a ride with a friend named Chet Helms to San Francisco, where she quickly became a popular figure on the “coffee” scene performing with Jorma Kaukonen (later guitarist for Jefferson Airplane).

On June 25, 1964, the duo recorded seven blues standards ("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"), which were later released as a bootleg ("The Typewriter Tape"). A typewriter, on which Margarita Kaukonen played, was used as percussion.

The first experiments with amphetamines initially helped the singer get rid of both depression and excess weight, but after two years she found herself in a rehabilitation clinic, exhausted and devastated.

In the spring of 1966, old acquaintance Chet Helms invited Joplin to Big Brother & the Holding Company, a group whose affairs he himself managed. Helms, one of the leaders of the hippie commune Family Dog, owned the Avalon Ballroom concert hall: here the ensemble settled as residents: Sam Andrew (vocals, guitar), James Gurley (guitar), Peter Albin (bass), David Getz ( drums) and Janis Joplin (vocals).

On June 10, 1966, the first performance of the new band took place at Avalon. The singer instantly established contact with the audience and immediately became a local star. Two months later, Big Brother signed a contract with independent label Mainstream Records and went into the studio to record their debut, which was released only a year later, after Janis Joplin made a splash at the Monterey Festival (June 1967), where she "attracted attention with her with an unusually strong and rich hoarse voice and a nervously energetic style of singing.” Her performance of "Ball and Chain" became the central episode of the film "Monterey Pop", which is still considered a masterpiece of rock documentary.

After the festival, new manager Albert Grossman (who also managed Bob Dylan's affairs) secured a contract with Columbia Records for the group. Mainstream Records finally released the stale (but not entirely finished) debut of Big Brother & the Holding Company, which appeared at No. 60 on Billboard in August ’67 (Columbia later bought the rights to the record and made it a hit) .

On February 16, 1968, the band began their first East Coast tour, which ended on April 7. big concert in New York City in memory of Martin Luther King, where Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield and Alvin Bishop also performed.

Janice cannot be called a beauty in the usual sense of the word, but she is undoubtedly a sex symbol, albeit in a somewhat unexpected “packaging”. Her voice combines the soul of Bessie Smith, the brilliance of Aretha Franklin, the drive of James Brown... Soaring to the heavens, this voice knows no boundaries and seems to generate within itself a divine polyphony. - Village Voice, February 22, 1968, about the band's concert at New York's Anderson Theater.

In March '68, the group began work on their second album, Cheap Thrills (the original title: "Dope, Sex and Cheap Thrills" had to be cut for obvious reasons). On October 12 of the same year, the record, the cover of which was designed by the famous underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, topped the Billboard lists and stayed at the top for 8 weeks. The hit Piece Of My Heart also contributed to the group's chart success. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12-13, 1968, also received rave reviews from the press.

As soon as the album gave way to Jimi Hendrix (“Electric Ladyland”), Joplin and guitarist Sam Andrew left Big Brother and formed their own ensemble, Janis & the Joplinaires, soon renamed Janis Joplin & Her Kozmic Blues Band. This constantly changing line-up lasted a year, but managed to conduct a European tour, ending with a triumphant concert at London's Albert Hall on April 21, 1969. In the summer, the group performed at a series of festivals (Newport, Atlanta, New Orleans, Woodstock), and was seen by more than a million spectators.

In October 1969, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! entered the top five of the Billboard 200 and soon went gold. Overall, however, the group was less well received than Big Brother. Mine last concert she gave on December 21, 1969 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

After disbanding the band, Joplin assembled The Full Tilt Boogie Band - mainly from Canadian musicians (bassist John Campbell, ex-Pauper, guitarist John Till, pianist Richard Bell, organist Ken Pearson, drummer Clark Pearson). In April, the group gathered for the first rehearsal, and in May they gave their first performances (in San Rafael, California). Before beginning a summer tour with The Full Tilt Boogie Band, Janice performed in a reunion concert with Big Brother & The Holding Company at the Fillmore West in San Francisco on April 4, 1970.

In the summer of 1970, Joplin and The Full Tilt Boogie Band took part in a superstar Canadian tour with The Band and The Grateful Dead. Due to financial troubles, the tour had to be suspended. Documentary film footage of Joplin's performances were made public only thirty years after her death.

In September, Janis Joplin and her band began working on the Pearl album, inviting producer Paul A. Rothschild, who became famous for his work with The Doors. By this time, she was already sliding down an inclined plane, driven by heroin and alcohol, which only worsened her growing depression. On October 4, 1970, after drinking at the Barneys Binery on Santa Monica Boulevard, Janis Joplin was found dead in her room at the Landmark Hotel - the same day she was scheduled to record vocals for the album's final track, "Buried Alive in the Blues." "(literally: "buried alive in the blues"). She was only 27 years old. The cause of death was clearly indicated by traces of fresh injections. Her last recordings were " Mercedes Benz"and an audio greeting to John Lennon on his birthday on October 1, which arrived to him on the day of the singer’s death. Janice's remains were cremated and her ashes were scattered along the California coast.

Shortly after Janis Joplin's death, the album Pearl was released. On February 27, 1971, the album topped the Billboard 200 and stayed at the top for 9 weeks. This is also where Janis Joplin's only chart-topper on the Billboard Hot 100 came from - Kris Kristofferson's composition "Me and Bobby McGee" (March 20, 1971), the final chord of a swift and bright creative life, which left an indelible mark on the history of rock music.

In 1979, Joplin's favorite actress, Bette Midler, played the singer in the film Rose and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her role. In the 1990s, one of the most popular Broadway musicals was Love, Janis, based on biographical book Janice's sisters. A new action film about her fate, “The Gospel According to Janice,” is planned for 2008.

Discography:
Janis Joplin & Jorma Kaukonen:
The Typewriter Tape (1964)
Big Brother and the Holding Company:
Big Brother & the Holding Company (1967)
Cheap Thrills (1968)
Live at Winterland '68 (1998)
Kozmic Blues Band:
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969)
Full Tilt Boogie Band
Pearl (1971, posthumous)
In Concert (1972)

JOPLIN, JANICE (1943–1970), American rock singer, considered by critics to be the embodiment of 1960s rock culture. Born in Texas on January 19, 1943 prosperous family. At the age of 17, she left home and, in the hope of becoming a singer, went to California. In the mid-1960s, she performed in small clubs in San Francisco, performing things from the repertoire of her idols - the Folksingers and blues performers. She attracted attention with her unusually strong and rich hoarse voice and nervously energetic style of singing. At this time, the Big Brother and Holding Company group was looking for a vocalist, and someone remembered amazing singer from Texas. Janice returned to San Francisco and became the lead singer of the group. Her first success came in 1967 at the Monterey rock festival, where she amazed listeners with piercingly energetic rock versions of blues and country ballads. Joplin did not sing, but shouted out lines of songs, conveying all the bitterness, pain and suffering of blues compositions. At the beginning of 1968, Janice's first tour of New York took place. The Columbia studio quickly recognized a promising talent in the lead singer of Big Brother, and the group received a contract. The album Cheap Thrills (1968) almost immediately became a bestseller. However, Janice decided to leave the group for a solo career. Her debut album Again I was overcome by this universal melancholy, Mama (I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!), which combined the styles of blues, soul and rock, was released in 1969 and immediately hit the charts. In the fall of 1970, Janice went to Los Angeles to work on recordings for the next album, but did not have time to finish the work. Joplin died in Los Angeles on October 3, 1970. The posthumously released album Pearl (1971) sold a million copies, and the single Me and Bobby McGee topped the Billboard chart. In the 1980s, two albums were released with previously unreleased recordings of the singer from the 1960s - Farewell Song (1982) and Big Brother and Holding Company Live (1985). A film was made about Joplin's life and work, The Rose, starring Bette Midler, and several biographies have been published, including Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. From the creative cauldron of Haight-Ashbury also came Big Brother and the Holding Company, with which the most interesting singer period Janis Joplin. Like many musicians who grew up in the California Bay Area, she was raised on blues and folk. But in the summer of '67, reworkings of blues numbers were increasingly interspersed with sunny fantasies of soft rock, and then the music became heavier, more edgy. Jeremy Pascall "The illustrated history of rock music", Chapter 4. The era of rock: 1967 - 1970.B musically Janice gave very little to rock: she left behind only a few records. Its significance lies elsewhere: it proved that women can sing rock music no worse than men. She was a broken girl: she drank a lot, took drugs, and there are many legends about her sexual conquests. On stage she was inimitable: powerful voice, absolute relaxedness, personal magnetism. She screamed her blues the way she felt them. Not an easy life pain and hatred burst into her songs. The public loved her, loved her passionately and lustfully. She was happy on stage, but not off stage. She once admitted: “On stage I make love to 25 thousand people, and then I go home alone.”
She died on October 4, 1970 in a Hollywood hotel room. Jeremy Pascall “The illustrated history of rock music”, Chapter 5. The fractured seventies.

Do you remember Janis Joplin?
Do you remember how she asked you to come back? How did she love? Janice and love are similar electric charge. Have you ever seen stars light up in the sky? This is how one of them lit up...
Little Janice Lyn was born at 9:45 on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas. Well isn't this the beginning for good fairy tale? Fairy tales with sad endings...
Janice has been in love since childhood. One of her first boys was a boy with the simple name Jack Smith. Together they read books, including the Gospel. Childhood was still going on: one day Janice came to Jack so that he would invite her to the film “The 10 Commandments”. The poor boy didn't have any best idea than to break a piggy bank and come to the cinema with all this little change. While he dealt with the usherette, Jen stood aside. “Sorry, I lost money in a bet with a friend,” he said. Patting him on the shoulder, the girl laughed: “You don’t have to lie if you’re going to watch a film about God...”
As she approached the age of 14, she began to change. According to her sister Laura, wars broke out in the house if her mother thought about washing Janice’s clothes (“They weren’t dirty enough!”). She tried to be “one of” among the boy group. They were older, but they allowed her to become the same ragamuffin they were. Together they listened to Odette and Leadbelly, read Kerouac and dreamed of the romance of the highway.
Jenny was a funny and sweet kid. When the company was discussing who would drive the car in Once again, she shouted: “The one with the biggest balls drives” and, laughing, got behind the wheel. Perhaps the feeling of being a girl-boy is what led Janice to free love late 60s.
After the first trip to San Francisco, Janice's company threw a party. Now every friend of hers had a girlfriend or wife. It weighed on her: “There’s Jack and Nova, Jim and Ray, Adrian and Gloria, this one and that one, but there’s always only Janis Joplin.”
Soon she had a friend, Sett, who asked for her hand in marriage. The wedding was planned for a few months after Christmas. It seemed that the little girl had found what she needed. One evening Jenny said to her sister, “I wish I had long, beautiful hair. During the day I would put it away, but every evening I would undo my hair in front of my husband. Strand by strand."
They corresponded, but soon he stopped writing completely. There was no more talk about the wedding.
In her book Buried Alive, Mira Friedman says that the inner emotional world Janis was too little to worry about people and try to bring them joy. She liked it better when someone cared about her, loved her...
Another point of hers was that she loved to spread all sorts of stories about herself. She preferred to talk about the beginning of her fame like this: “I was fucked into being in Big Brother” (untranslatable play on words...). Now it is already difficult and, probably, there is no need to find out whether this was so or not.
They say that all of the Big Brothers were close to Janice in one way or another, they say that one-night stands were commonplace for her (but not the main thing, for sure), they say that among her men were Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix.
Believe it or not, Janice met Jim only once, and that time was unsuccessful. Paul Rothschild (producer of Janice and the Doors) hosted the press night. Between sips of her favorite whiskey, Janice pointed at Morrison and said, “I want that piece of meat.” When he tried to get into her car and be as close as possible, she began to resist and threw an empty bottle at his head. I must say, Jim was crazy about such women. He loved violence.
In an interview, she said: “I’m ready to give up everything I have if a person appears in my life who can love me.”
Probably, “the one” should have been David Niehaus, whom Janice met during the carnival in Rio, in February 1970. The acquaintance itself was peculiar:
- Hey, you remind me of some rock star. Joplin or something...
- I am Janis Joplin!
Despite her fame and vanity, David saw a person, not an icon. They felt good when they were together. And when they had to separate for a couple of days, her old “friend” Peggy Caserta came to Jen.
What can I say... the main thing in Janis Joplin's life was always music. She ran away from her to her lovers, but after all, “an hour of performing on stage is like a hundred orgasms at once,” because “you can leave everything, leave your house and friends, children and friends, old people and friends, anything that is in this world, with the exception of music."
It is impossible to be Janis Joplin and not suffer from a stone on your neck, nicknamed the ephemeral word “love”. She passed all her passions through her creativity and let them go.
And you left, slamming the door.
And she left, saying only: “I’ve got a secret.”

1. Shortly before her death, Janice paid tribute to the performer who greatly influenced her work.
   Blues singer Bessie Smith (once dubbed the "Empress of the Blues") died in 1937 as a result of injuries received in a car accident. Unfortunately, she was not given due honors and was buried in an unmarked grave. This state of affairs continued until August 1970, when Janice, who highly regarded creative heritage Bessie, along with Juanita Green (who served as Smith's housekeeper during her childhood), paid for a headstone and grave decoration befitting the memory of the "Empress."
2. Joplin's last recording was a happy birthday message for John Lennon.
   The last recordings that Janice managed to complete were the composition Mercedes-Benz and a congratulations message for John Lennon. October 1, 1970 in honor of the soon-to-be birthday of the former member The Beatles, the singer recorded an old cowboy tune from Dale Evans' repertoire, Happy Trails. The song, in particular, contained the following lines: “Have a safe journey until we meet again.” The track was entitled "Happy Birthday, John (Happy Trails)" and was subsequently released on Janice's 1993 box set. Lennon later admitted talk show host Dick Cavett that the congratulations were delivered to his home after Janice's death.
3. Janice's ashes were scattered over the waters of the deep blue sea.
   Janice's body was cremated in Los Angeles, then her ashes were scattered from the plane over Pacific Ocean and along Stinson Beach. A small private funeral service took place, attended only by the singer's parents and her aunt.
4. Janice was rewarded for her repeated blackouts due to alcohol consumption.
   The singer was known to drink heavily, and Southern Comfort was her drink of choice. Whiskey became an integral part of Janice's image, thanks to which its sales increased to such an extent that Joplin was able to receive a lynx fur coat from the manufacturing company as a token of gratitude.
5. The singer got tattoos before it became fashionable.
   In April 1970, Janice was tattooed by the legendary artist Lyle Tuttle - this famous sign on the outside of Janice's wrist, a symbol signifying the emancipation of women. Joplin also had a tattoo of a small heart on her left chest. “I wanted some decorations. One, on my wrist, for everyone; the other one, on my chest, for me and my friends,” after saying this, Janice grinned and added: “Just a little fun for the guys, like icing on the cake.”
6. The composition “All is Loneliness” came straight from the singer’s heart.
   Indeed, despite her cheerful personality and all the people around her, Janice was overall an unhappy girl. She was loving, had several lovers, but in many respects she remained very lonely, because there was no real, sincere love. “I make love to 25,000 people on stage and then go home alone.”
7. You could see Janice perform at Woodstock for $8.
   A picture from Variety Magazine, published on JanisJoplin.net, shows that Joplin received $7,500 for her performance at the famous Woodstock festival, although it is said that many of the performers were paid nothing at all. Do you know how much it would cost you to attend this epoch-making event? For just $8 you could buy a one-day ticket. And if you're a big spender, you'd spend as much as $18 for a three-day pass.
8. The biography of Billie Holiday was like a Bible for Joplin.
   We have already mentioned Bessie Smith's influence on Janice. Two other important performers in her life were Billie Holiday and Leadbelly. According to Joplin, the first album she bought was a Leadbelly record. As for Holiday, her autobiography, Lady Sings The Blues, was one of two books that Janice took with her to San Francisco. Joplin's friend, Richard Hangden, believes that this book was akin to the Bible for the singer, and Janice kept it with her until the end of her days.
9. The Cheap Thrills album was originally titled slightly differently.
   Cheap Thrills was planned to be released under the title Sex, Dope And Cheap Thrills, but Columbia Records vetoed 2/3 of the title. Since the propaganda of “cheap thrills” did not threaten either the company itself or public morality to the same extent as the other two pleasures, the album was eventually released under the name Cheap Thrills.
10. Joplin once told Jim Morrison quite harshly.
    The first meeting of two outstanding musicians in the history of rock ended very painfully for Jim: Janice broke a bottle of Southern Comfort on his head, knocking out the frontman of The Doors. However, Morrison, who loved physical confrontations and violent showdowns, seemed to be captivated by the determined girl. The next day, he asked producer Paul Rothschild for Joplin's phone number. However, Rothschild informed him that Janice was not interested in meeting again, so the two future members of the 27 Club never saw each other again. According to Rothschild, Morrison was heartbroken.

Janis Lyn Joplin was born on January 19, 1943, and died on October 4, 1970, but for her short life Thanks to her emotional performances of songs and volcanic performances, she managed to win millions of hearts around the world and leave an indelible mark on the history of rock. The singer spent her childhood in the small Texas town of Port Arthur. WITH early years a girl who was known among her peers " ugly duckling", was interested in literature and drawing, and most of all she was attracted to music. As a teenager, Janice fell into the environment of the beatniks, in whose circles folk, jazz and blues were popular. Joplin really liked the blues, and she began to copy the style of such performers of the genre as Bessie Smith At first, Janice performed in small Texas coffee shops, and then, together with the beatniks, began to wander around other states. free life led the singer to become acquainted with alcohol and drugs, with which she now inextricably linked music.

Having traveled a fair amount, Janice returned home, but it was not interesting to sit in one place, and she went to California. The reason for this voyage was the offer of an old friend Chet Helms to audition for one group. Upon arrival in San Francisco, Joplin quickly disappeared among the hippie commune and became a member of the ensemble "".

This band, performing psychedelic blues, toured the California coast and was not very well known outside the region. "Big Brother" signed a contract with Mainstream Records and released one album and two singles on this company. However, since the label was small and practically did not promote discs, the first releases had almost no effect. When the "summer of love" arrived, Big Brother And The Holding Company performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival, and it turned out to be their finest hour. A stunning performance of the song "Ball And Chain" attracted great attention, and the famous manager Albert Grossman immediately got down to business. He moved Big Brother from Mainstream to Columbia Records, where Cheap Thrills was released in August 1968.

The album has already won gold status for pre-orders, and such hits as “Piece Of My Heart” and “Summertime” brought the team to large stages. By the way, since the lion's share of success belonged to Janis Joplin, the group was now introduced as "Janis Joplin With Big Brother And Holding Company". The musicians' incomes jumped sharply, and they turned to expensive drugs. Against the backdrop of what was happening, relationships in the team began to deteriorate, and the group soon broke up.

Janice started solo career and, taking guitarist Sam Andrew from the “holding”, recruited a new accompanying composition, “Kozmic Blues Band”. Since she was now the sovereign mistress, the singer returned from psychedelics to her favorite soul-blues. The change in direction, indicated on the 1969 album "I Got Dem Ol" Kozmic Blues Again Mama!", caused a mixed reaction in the States, but Europe was choking with delight. Meanwhile, Janice's passion for alcohol and drugs continued, but one day the singer tried to break out of vicious circle and reduced her consumption of speed. Having collected new team"Full Tilt Boogie Band", Joplin began recording her second solo album. On "Pearl" the singer finally formed her vision of white blues and was very happy with this music. Unfortunately, during the sessions, Janice turned to heroin again, and that turned out to be the end of her. At one far from perfect moment, she miscalculated the dose and died.

"Pearl" with the hits "Me And Bobby McGee" and "Mercedes Benz" was released after the singer's death. Subsequently, all sorts of live albums and compilations were published, many of which were certified platinum and tended to be present on the Billboard charts. In 1995, Janice's name appeared in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and 10 years later she was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.