Joplin, Janis

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American blues-influenced rock singer and occasional songwriter with a distinctive voice. Joplin released four albums as the frontwoman for several bands from 1967 to a posthumous release in 1971. more...

Life and career

Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas. The daughter of Seth Joplin, a worker at Texaco, she had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. She grew up listening to blues musicians such as Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton and singing in the local choir. Joplin graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in 1960 and went to college at the University of Texas in Austin, though she never completed a degree. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she was mostly shunned, but found a group of boys who allowed her to tag along. One of those boys, a football player named Grant Lyons, played her the blues for the first time, an old Leadbelly record. Primarily a painter, it was in high school that she first began singing blues and folk music with friends.

Cultivating a rebellious manner that could be viewed as "liberated" — the women's liberation movement was still in its infancy at this time — Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines, and in part after the beat poets. She left Texas for San Francisco in 1963, lived in North Beach and in Haight-Ashbury. For a while she worked occasionally as a folk singer. Around this time her drug use began to increase, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other intoxicants. She was a heavy drinker throughout her career, and her trademark beverage was Southern Comfort.

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