71 Facts About Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer and songwriter.

In 1967, Joplin rose to prominence following an appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Janis Joplin performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and on the Festival Express train tour.

Five singles by Janis Joplin reached the US Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which posthumously reached number one in March 1971.

Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums.

Janis Joplin was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Janis Lyn Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on January 19,1943, to Dorothy Bonita East, a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin, an engineer at Texaco.

Janis Joplin's parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children.

Janis Joplin began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School.

Janis Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school.

Janis Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin, although she did not complete her college studies.

Janis Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets.

Janis Joplin left Texas in January 1963, "Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place", hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco.

In 1963, Janis Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting.

Janis Joplin used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort.

Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Janis Joplin's parents noticed her weight of 88 pounds, she changed her lifestyle.

Janis Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965.

Janis Joplin had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco.

In 1965 and 1966, Janis Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund.

Janis Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing.

Janis Joplin said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator, as she had done a few years earlier, or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become similar to all the other women in Port Arthur.

Approximately a year before Janis Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar.

Janis Joplin was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier.

In June 1966, Janis Joplin was still strict about drug use and when she shared an apartment with Travis Rivers upon their arrival in San Francisco, she made him promise that using needles would not be allowed there.

Janis Joplin was screaming and crying and Travis walked in.

Janis Joplin had a short relationship and longer friendship with Grateful Dead founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.

In early 1967, Janis Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish.

Janis, which was reviewed by The Washington Post on March 21,1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane.

The film Janis includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall.

Janis Joplin had informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig.

Janis Joplin was flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother to the festival site.

Janis Joplin pulled through, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned.

The audience cheered for an encore, to which Janis Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain".

Janis Joplin was unhappy with her performance and her singing was not included, by her own insistence, in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More.

In February 1970, Janis Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use.

Janis Joplin was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969.

In Brazil, Janis Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David Niehaus, who was traveling around the world.

Niehaus and Janis Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.

Janis Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group.

Janis Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics.

Janis Joplin performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21,1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew.

Janis Joplin was like a parody of what she was at her best.

Janis Joplin's singing was real flabby, no edge at all.

Janis Joplin came up with the second verse [for "Mercedes Benz"], too, about a color TV.

Janis Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier.

Janis Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24,1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album.

The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Janis Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships.

Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis, that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use.

On September 26,1970, Janis Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby".

On October 1,1970, Janis Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take.

People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Janis Joplin expressing anger about Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions.

On Sunday evening, October 4,1970, Janis Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke.

Noguchi performed an autopsy on Janis Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol.

Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark Motel switchboard, only to learn that Janis Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming calls for her after midnight.

Janis Joplin used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry.

Janis Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean.

Approximately a month after the concert, Janis Joplin visited Caserta's boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of $5 jeans for sale, asking to make a 50 cent down payment.

Janis Joplin did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment.

The day after Janis Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Janis Joplin briefly when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend, 19-year-old Debbie Nuciforo.

Nuciforo was an aspiring rock drummer who wanted to meet Janis Joplin and was high on heroin at the time.

Janis Joplin mentioned her disappointment over both friends bailing out of their menage a trois to her drug dealer on Saturday while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the dealer.

Janis Joplin was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other.

Janis Joplin was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals with a distinctive rock and roll rasping vocal quality, as well as her "electric" stage presence.

Janis Joplin couldn't find her, so he went for her lover.

When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die.

In 1995, Janis Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Also in 2009, Janis Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series.

In 2013 Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies in which Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin.

On November 4,2013, Janis Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry.

Janis Joplin's star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute.

Janis Joplin was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she battled an ugly-duckling syndrome.