Janis Joplin
☼ Born on 19 December 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas, USA
† Died on 4 December 1970, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, cause heroin overdose
Biography
Janis Lyn Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the oil-refining town of Port Arthur, Texas, near the border with Louisiana. Her father was a cannery worker and her mother was a registrar for a business college. As an overweight teenager, she was a folk-music devotee (especially Odetta, Leadbelly and Bessie Smith). After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, she attended Lamar State College and the University of Texas, where she played auto-harp in Austin bars.She was nominated for the Ugliest Man on Campus in 1963, and she spent two years traveling, performing and becoming drug-addicted. Back home in 1966, her friend Chet Helms suggested she become lead singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, an established Haight-Ashbury band consisting of guitarists James Gurley and Sam Andrew, bassist Peter Albin and drummer Dave Getz). She got wide recognition through the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, highlights of which were released in Monterey Pop (1968), and with the band's landmark second album, "Cheap Thrills". She formed her "Kosmic Blues Band" the following year and achieved still further recognition as a solo performer at Woodstock in 1969, highlights released in Woodstock (1970). In the spring of 1970, she sang with the "Full Tilt Boogie Band" and, on October 4 of that year, she was found dead in Hollywood's Landmark Motor Hotel (now known as Highland Gardens Hotel) from a heroin-alcohol overdose the previous day. Her ashes were scattered off the coast of Ca
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lifornia. Her biggest selling album was the posthumously released "Pearl", which contained her quintessential song: "Me & Bobby McGee".
In the role of actor
Love to Love You, Donna Summer – Hot Docs 2023 (26/04/2023)
The career of “Queen of Disco” Donna Summer is revisited in Love to Love You, Donna Summer. Raised as part of a family of gospel singers, Donna Summer first became known for her “20 Minutes of Love” 1975 orgasmic dance hit “Love to Love You, Baby.” This and her 1977 hit collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, […]
Janis: Little Girl Blue (25/09/2015)
The life and career of Janis Joplin is told in the documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue. Janis Joplin was born in 1943 in the town of Port Arthur, Texas. Despite having some body image issues, it quite apparent that that the blues-loving Joplin had an excellent singing voice and she rose to fame as the lead […]