Janis Joplin – 50th Music Anniversaries and Other Musings

January 11 – Janis Joplin’s Best & Last

1/11/71: Janis Joplin – Pearl

The loss of Janis Joplin in October 1970, which occurred between the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, would eventually signal part of the symbolic end of 1960’s idealism. And sadly, from a musical standpoint, fans discovered she was possibly just getting started when her final studio album, Pearl, was posthumously released on this day 50 years ago.

The Best Songs From The Album “Pearl” By Janis Joplin | Society Of Rock

As a Gen Xer, I discovered her music the same ways most of my peers did. Me and Bobby McGee was probably one of the first songs of hers I heard, as it’s one of her more “radio friendly” tunes. But what got my attention as a sixteen-year-old were tracks like Piece of My Heart and Down on Me with their crashing drums, grungy guitars, and unbridled soul emanating from those vocals. Then I became enamored with the film clips of her performances at Monterey Pop and Woodstock – especially the former – and that was all I needed to confirm I was a fan. Unfortunately for me, I kind of stopped there. Her hits and the bits of her on film were plenty until I realized a few years later that there was more, as in, arguably her best.

Pearl is a strong album for a number of reasons, including a new, much tighter backing band known as the Full Tilt Boogie Band, whom she had performed with on stage a number of times before recording sessions began. It was widely known in the music world at the time that Big Brother & the Holding Co., as well as her next group, the Kozmic Blues Band, were holding her back in the studio. With the new group, and especially with Paul Rothchild as producer, a more polished (in a good way) sound was achieved. The best known songs, which are also the singles issued from the album (Me & Bobby McGee, Cry Baby, Get It While You Can, & Mercedes Benz) come alive even more in the context of this album, beginning with the first track, Move Over. Again, the new band and producer were just as crucial as the star on this one.

What would’ve been, we’ll never know. What could’ve been? Maybe this album would’ve helped her overcome some of the self-doubt/esteem issues that plagued her as she neared her 30’s. Maybe Janis would’ve settled into a better place in life where she was comfortable in her own skin. Perhaps she would’ve let go of some of that pain with its roots back in Port Arthur. Supposedly her overdose came as a result of not realizing what she took that night was much more powerful than what she normally would’ve, and that she wasn’t even using as regularly at that point. Maybe her life would’ve changed due to the more mature musical direction she was just beginning to embark upon. Maybe too much damage had been done to her long-term health by then.

A bio authored by Janis’s sister, Laura Joplin

Musically, she left us with a smile. The a cappella Mercedes Benz, recorded during her final session just three days before her death, is a funny commentary on consumerism. Nothing in it or the rest of this fantastic album suggests the end was closing in. But the otherwise upbeat Buried Alive in the Blues, left as an instrumental because she died before the vocal was recorded, became an odd reminder that that’s exactly what was happening.

Tracklist

Side One:

Move Over
Cry Baby
A Woman Left Lonely
Half Moon
Buried Alive in the Blues

Side Two:

My Baby
Me and Bobby McGee
Mercedes Benz
Trust Me
Get It While You Can

-Stephen

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/janis-joplin-pearl/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/pearl-mw0000190564

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_(Janis_Joplin_album)

October 4 – Janis Joplin 50 Years On

Janis Joplin passed away 50 years ago today, but rather than a dour post that rehashes the details of her final hours, I’m taking a more celebratory slant just as a reminder to anyone who might need one what an amazing talent she was. She, along with Jimi and Jim, was the embodiment of a shooting star. She arrived on the scene with soulful bombast and maintained it, uncompromisingly, until the end.

It’s easy to forget, given the legends that have grown up around the late 60’s generation of artists, that festivals such as Monterey Pop and Woodstock were introductions to the greater listening public to folks like Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and others. Janis was 24 years old at Monterey, insecure about her talent and herself in general, and without any formal musical training. Yet I can’t watch her performance there without chills. Neither can the audience, who were blown away. Mama Cass’s jaw dropped, probably with a knowing that the game was over for some of the mid-60’s class of pop entertainers, a few of whom were on that same stage during the festival. And Janis knew she’d nailed it when she skipped off the stage at the conclusion of her performance. She was the absolute real deal.

-Stephen

August 12 – “Four gentlemen and one great, great broad…”: Cheap Thrills @ 50

Big Brother and the Holding Company – Cheap Thrills

So many of these albums from ’68 seem to have some unique angle on the claim of being among the most important in rock history, and Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company, released this day 50 years ago, is no exception. It was the band’s second album, and the last one to feature Janis Joplin’s soulful, desperate, wailing blues vocals.

The band had emerged in 1965 in the same San Francisco psychedelic music scene which produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Jefferson Airplane. They were already established in the Bay Area as a progressive instrumental jam band and house band at the Avalon Ballroom when Joplin, a Texan from Port Arthur, made her way west and auditioned with them. She made her live debut with the group at the Avalon in June of 1966, and their eponymous debut album was released in August of the following year just after their (her) breakout performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. It would take months of legal wrangling for the group to extract itself from its contract with Mainstream Records for their move to Columbia, which is why it took another full year for this follow-up release.

Cheap Thrills was originally intended to be a proper live album to showcase the energetic, raw sound of the band and Joplin’s vocal, but attempts to achieve good recordings on the band’s spring ’68 tour proved fruitless. They were a little too loud and raw, and audiences outside of California didn’t quite know what to make of them, especially Janis. So, with producer John Simon, they did the next best thing: record a “live” album in the studio by adding live audience sound effects. Their cover of Big Mama Thornton’s Ball and Chain was the only true live recording on the record, taken from the Fillmore West. But whereas faux, doctored (or “Frankensteined”) recordings cheapened some live recordings in the 70’s (retrospectively speaking), I think it works great in this instance. And it starts with Bill Graham’s “live” introduction: “Four gentlemen and one great, great broad: Big Brother and the Holding Company…”

Of the album’s seven tracks, three were covers: the aforementioned Ball and Chain, Erma Franklin’s Piece of My Heart which ended side one and became the band’s signature song, and Gershwin’s Summertime. Janis made all of them her songs. In a 50th anniversary retrospective in Rolling Stone, Jordan Runtagh notes “Joplin’s mournful version of Gershwin’s Summertime seems only to underscore the shift in mood from the Summer of Love to the Summer of Violence that greeted the album. A week after its release, police would beat up demonstrators at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention. A month later, Joplin and Big Brother parted ways for good.” The album also features the Joplin-penned acoustic blues, Turtle Blues, and Sam Andrew’s cool psychedelic guitar work on Oh, Sweet Mary.

The group pushed the envelope with Columbia. The original title of the album was to be Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills, and the cover was to feature the group together in bed, naked. Needless to say, the ideas were vetoed by the suits. Instead, the cover was drawn by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. By the end of the year, Cheap Thrills sold almost a million copies and spent eight weeks at the top of the Billboard charts. A month later, urged on by her manager Albert Grossman, Janis submitted notice to the band that she was moving on. Big Brother and the Holding Company had given her a start, but there’s no doubt who the star was, and she needed better musicians to get where she wanted to go.

As for reviews of the record, it’s kind of the same story that pervades rock music from the era: Contemporary reviews were all over the place from “not a well-produced, good rock and roll recording” to “it not only gets Janis’s voice down, it also does justice to her always-underrated and ever-improving musicians.” And retrospectively, it’s considered a masterpiece. The album’s aspects that were considered negative by some at the time of its release – its messiness and the gravelly onslaught of Joplin’s vocals – are of course now considered crucial elements of its psychedelic glory.

I first heard this album in my mid/late 1980s teens, and it stuck immediately. I can honestly say my reaction to it was much like what I read contemporary reactions were like: I’d never heard anything like Janis Joplin. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t supposed to be. I discovered Hendrix around the same time, and somehow felt the two of them communicated the blues in such amazing and unique ways that my small Midwest town brain just couldn’t articulate. They both found mass audiences, but did so without compromising who they were. Janis Joplin: a white woman emerging out of nowhere Texas to become not only one of the best female blues singers, but one of the best blues singers ever, period. Alas, no matter how much we may wonder “What if?,” Janis, along with Jimi, Jim, and others, was a shooting star who was going to burn out. She recorded two albums as a solo artist (the second a posthumous release) before checking out, but Cheap Thrills is where her star shines the brightest. The music world could sure use another Janis right about now.

Some interesting factoids about the album can be found here.