Janis Lyn Joplin (1943 - 1970)

Born 19 Jan 1943 in Port Arthur, Jefferson, Texas, United States

Ancestors

Died 4 Oct 1970 at age 27 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States

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Descendant of : Shadrach Hoar (1743 - aft. 1802) Revolutionary War Patriots.

Biography

Janis Joplin is Notable.

Janis Lyn Joplin was born on 19 January 1943 in Jefferson, Texas, daughter of Seth Ward Joplin and Dorothy Bonita East.^[1]

Janis Joplin was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist.

She performed at the Monterey Pop Festival and later became one of the major attractions to the Woodstock festival. Joplin's popular songs from her four-year solo career include "Down on Me", "Summertime", "Piece of My Heart", "Ball 'n' Chain", "Maybe", "To Love Somebody", "Kozmic Blues", "Work Me, Lord", "Cry Baby", "Mercedes Benz", and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee."

Joplin was well known for her performing abilities, and her fans referred to her stage presence as "electric". At the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul," and became known as Pearl among her friends. She was also a painter, dancer and music arranger. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004, and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.^[2]

Janis died (age 27) on 4 October 1970 in Los Angeles.^[3]

Piece Of Her Heart: Janis Joplin Honors Blues Inspiration Bessie Smith Near the end of her own tragically short life, Janis made a remarkable gesture to honor one of her blues heroines.[1]

Published on August 8, 2023

Towards the end of her life, Janis Joplin made a magnanimous gesture that confirmed her debt to an artist who was one of her greatest inspirations: the great blues singer Bessie Smith. On August 8, 1970, Joplin and Juanita Green — who had done housework for Smith as a child — paid for a proper headstone to be laid at Smith’s gravesite, which had remained unmarked since she was buried some 33 years earlier.

Joplin saw the equally outspoken and groundbreaking artist as such a role model that she sometimes told her friends she felt like Smith reincarnated. The tombstone at the gravesite, near Philadelphia, henceforth carried the epitaph “The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing.” The touching, heartfelt words were chosen by Joplin and Green, who by this time was also the president of the North Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP.

Smith, fondly remembered as “The Empress of the Blues,” had died in 1937, her exact age unknown, although she was thought to be 43. She was killed in a road accident near Coahoma, Mississippi, and some 7,000 people were estimated to have attended her funeral.

‘This huge voice’

In an interview with Hit Parader magazine in 1969, Joplin explained just how influential Smith and other blues singers had been in the development of her own style. “Back in Port Arthur, I’d heard some Lead Belly records, and, well, if the blues syndrome is true, I guess it’s true about me,” she said. “So I began listening to blues and folk music. I bought Bessie Smith and Odetta records, and one night, I was at this party and I did an imitation of Odetta. I’d never sung before, and I came out with this huge voice.”

Joplin and Green’s gesture with the headstone moved the artist Dory Previn to write the song “Stone For Bessie Smith,” which she included on her 1971 album Mythical Kings and Iguanas, released some seven months later. Very poignantly, Joplin herself was not around to hear it: she died of a drug overdose at the age of 27, just two months after Bessie’s headstone was erected, in October 1970.

Sample Recordings

• Sample recording: Piece of My Heart
• Sample recording: Me & Bobby McGee

JANIS JOPLIN LITTLE GIRL BLUE PBS DOCUMENTARY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnYfJTGTGk4

Note Regardless of Wikipedia information, her bands were blues/ rock, not psychedelic rock. Janis did not like LSD, preferring bourbon. Read any of her biographies listed under Sources.

Sources

1. ↑ Birth: "Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997"
   citing Texas Department of State Health Services.
   FamilySearch Record: V6SS-9QZ (accessed 13 June 2023)
   Janis Lyn Joplin born on 19 Jan 1943, daughter of Seth Ward Joplin & Dorothy Bonita East, in Jefferson, Texas.
2. ↑ Wikipedia
3. ↑ Death: "California, U.S., Death Index, 1940-1997"
   Place: Los Angeles; Date: 4 Oct 1970
   Ancestry Record 5180 #3751794 (accessed 13 June 2023)
   Janis L Joplin death 4 Oct 1970 (born 19 Jan 1943) in Los Angeles.

• Joplin. Laura. Love, Janis. Villard, 1992, written by her sister.
• George-Warren, Holly. Janis: Her Life and Music.
• Friedman, Myra. Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin, Crown, 1992.
• "California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGTN-CFJZ : 22 August 2018), Janis L Joplin, 1970.

• Burial: Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/555/janis-joplin: accessed 13 June 2023), memorial page for Janis Joplin (19 Jan 1943–4 Oct 1970), Find a Grave Memorial ID 555; Cremated, Ashes scattered at sea, Her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean and along Stinson Beach, California; Maintained by Find a Grave.. Cremated, Ashes scattered at sea. Specifically: Ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean

• "United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV5W-1MYT : accessed 21 August 2019), Janis Joplin in entry for Seth Ward Joplin, Texas, United States, 22 May 1987; from "Recent Newspaper Obituaries (1977 - Today)," database, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com : 2014); citing , born-digital text.

• https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-disastrous-night-jimi-hendrix-jammed-with-jim-morrison-and-janis-joplin/
• https://www.loudersound.com/features/what-happened-when-jimi-hendrix-jammed-with-jim-morrison
• https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/janis-joplin-bessie-smith-headstone/