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Lund
Coat of arms
Motto: Idéernas stad (Eng: The city of ideas)
Lund
Coordinates: 55°42′N 13°12′E / 55.7°N 13.2°E / 55.7; 13.2Coordinates: 55°42′N 13°12′E / 55.7°N 13.2°E / 55.7; 13.2
Country	Sweden
Province	Scania
County	Skåne County
Municipality	Lund Municipality
Area[1]
• Total	25.75 km2 (9.94 sq mi)
Population (31 December 2010)[1]
• Total	82,800
• Density	3,215/km2 (8,330/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)

Lund (Swedish pronunciation: [lɵnd] ( listen)) is a city in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. The town has 82,800 inhabitants in 2010,^[1] out of a municipal total of 110,824. It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Skåne County. The city is believed to have been founded around 990, when Scania belonged to Denmark. It soon became a major Christian center of the Baltic Sea region, at a time when the area was still a frontier area for Christian mission, and within Scandinavia and especially Denmark through the Middle Ages. From 1103 it was the seat of an archbishop. At the center of the city stands the towering Lund Cathedral, built ca 1090-1145.

Lund University, established 1666, is today one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research.^[2][3][4]

History[link]

Lund Cathedral

Along with Sigtuna, Lund is the oldest city in present-day Sweden. Lund's origins are unclear. Until the 1980s, the town was thought to have been founded around 1020 by either Sweyn I Forkbeard or his son Canute the Great of Denmark.^[5] The area was then part of the kingdom of Denmark. But, recent archaeological discoveries suggest that the first settlement dated to circa 990, possibly the relocation of settlers at Uppåkra. The Uppåkra settlement dates back to the first century B.C.^[6] and its remains are at the present site of the village of Uppåkra. King Sweyn I Forkbeard moved Loda to its present location, a distance of some five kilometres. The new location of Lund, on a hill and across a ford, gave the new site considerable defensive advantages in comparison with Uppåkra, situated on the highest point of a large plain.

The city was made a see in 1048 and united with Dalby in 1060,^[7] and in 1103 became the seat of the archbishop for Scandinavia. The diocese of nearby Dalby was absorbed in 1066. Lund Cathedral was similarly founded in or shortly after 1103. In 1152, the Norwegian archdiocese of Nidaros was founded as a separate province of the church, independent of Lund. In 1164 Sweden also acquired an archbishop of its own, although he was nominally subordinate to the archbishop of Lund. It is still, as the diocese of Lund, a diocese in the Church of Sweden.

A street in the old part of the town

Lund Cathedral School (Katedralskolan) was founded in 1085 by the Danish king Canute the Saint. This is the oldest school in Scandinavia and one of the oldest in Northern Europe. Many prominent people were educated there, among them the actor Max von Sydow and several high-ranking politicians.

In 1658, the Scanian lands were ceded by Denmark to Sweden by the Treaty of Roskilde. On December 4, 1676 Lund was defended in the Battle of Lund, one of the bloodiest battles fought in Scandinavia.

Adelgatan Street, Lund

Lund University, established in 1666, is Sweden's largest, with 42,000 full or part-time students, although not all live in Lund. The figure includes Lund Institute of Technology, which is to some extent independent of the old university. As late as the 1940s, Lund was a relatively small city with few large-scale industries, covering only about a fourth of the current urban area, and dominated by the cathedral and the university.^{[citation needed]} Since then, the student population has increased about twelvefold; many industrial companies in the chemical, medical or electronics branches and, from the 1990s within information management, have set up establishments in the city; and the town's population, architecture and energy have been transformed.

Compared with many other Swedish cities, the urban heart of Lund is well preserved. A local law requires archaeological excavation in association with any downtown property planned for demolition and redevelopment.

Geography[link]

Lund is located in Sweden's largest agricultural district, in the southwest of Scania, less than ten kilometres from the sandy shore of the Öresund Strait. From the top of the Sankt Hans Hill it is possible to see Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. It is therefore some distance from other Swedish cities, about 250 kilometres to Gothenburg, 600 to Stockholm and about 1200 to Umeå. The city of Malmö, on the other hand, is only about 15 kilometres away.

Climate[link]

Lund, like the rest of southern Sweden, has an oceanic climate. Despite its northern location, the climate is relatively mild compared to other locations in similar latitude, or even somewhat further south, mainly because of its proximity to the sea. Because of its northerly latitude, daylight lasts as long as 17 hours in midsummer, and only around 7 hours in midwinter.

Summers are warm and pleasant with average high temperatures of 22 °C (72 °F) and lows of around 14 °C (57 °F), but temperatures do sometimes exceed 25 °C (77 °F) and occasional heat waves are common during the summer. Winters are cold, with temperatures steady between -1 to 3 °C (30 to 37 °F).

Rainfall is light to moderate throughout the year with 169 wet days. Snowfall occurs sparingly, mainly in December through March, but snow cover does not remain for a long time, and some winters tends to be virtually free of snow.

Main sights[link]

During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the town was the seat of the archbishop, many churches and monasteries were built. At its peak, Lund had 27 churches, but most of them were demolished as result of the Reformation in 1536. Several medieval buildings remain, including Lund Cathedral, Liberiet, the restaurant Stäket and parts of the Cathedral School. Timber framing is characteristic of the houses built up to the end of the 19th century, for example the Wickmanska gården.

Most of the central buildings in Lund date from the late 19th century, when small houses were replaced by multi-storey ones. Notable buildings built during this period include the University Library (1902), Grand Hotel (1899) and the University Main Building (1882).

• 

  Skyline

• 

  Lund University main building

• 

  The University Library

• 

  Liberiet

• 

  Grand Hotel

• 

  The Cathedral School

• 

  Wickmanska gården

• 

  Botaniska trädgården

• 

  Facade clock at parking garage close to Högevallsbadet

Transportation[link]

Major roads[link]

Lund has been connected to the motorway network since 1953 when the E22, the first motorway in Sweden, was built round the edge of the town. There are also other connections to most major roads in the area, for example the E6 via Riksväg 16, and the Länsväg 108 which connects to the E65.

Lund train station

Cycling[link]

Lund has been praised for its cycling infrastructure.^[9] There are 5000 bike parking spaces in the town, including a multi-storey facility, 160 km of cyclepaths, and 45% of commuters travel by bicycle. There has been no increase in car usage for the past 10 years.

Railways and public transport[link]

Lund has been on the main railway line between Malmö and Stockholm since 1857. Today there are direct connections to Copenhagen and Elsinore via the Öresund Bridge. This connection is mainly served by the Öresundståg, maintained by DSB, the Danske Statsbaner in Denmark and Skånetrafiken in Scania, as well as by SJ in the rest of Sweden. Local traffic is managed by the two-coach electric multiple units Pågatåg, which provide connections to many destinations in Scania. Because of Lund's central position, it is possible to travel to the three largest cities in Sweden without having to change trains.

Public transport within Lund is overseen by Skånetrafiken^[10] but the actual bus network is licensed to the Bergkvarabuss company. The city buses connect around 400 bus stops with 11 bus lines served by a fleet of 40 Mercedes Citaro^{[citation needed]} running on compressed natural gas and a few smaller buses using diesel. There are plans of initiating a tram network ^[11]to achieve faster and higher-capacity public transport in some parts of the city and to the suburban towns of Dalby, Staffanstorp and Södra Sandby.

In recent years the pressure on rail and bus lines has increased, due to the ever growing commuting between Lund, Malmö and other nearby places and increased casual and professional contacts with the Copenhagen area. As of 2009, the railyard and quays area of Lund station is undergoing some rearrangements to accommodate expected growth in traffic, while Malmö station has also been rebuilt in tandem with the Malmö City Tunnel, which opened in December 2010.

Airports[link]

Lund is located close to Malmö-Sturup Airport which is mainly used for domestic flights. Kastrup, the airport for Copenhagen is often used for longer international flights, and is about 33 minutes by train from Lund. There also used to be a very small airstrip, Hasslanda Flygfält, to the south of Lund, mainly used for private and charter flights.

Culture[link]

Lund University Male Voice Choir at the Lund University main building on 1 May 2005

The culture in Lund is characterized by the large student population and student traditions, such as a student theater group since 1886.^[12] A substantial part of the nightlife is located at student fraternities called 'Nations'.

Lund also has a city theatre (though without a professional local ensemble of its own) and a number of other places for concerts and theatres.

Lund hosts the largest open-air museum of Scania, Kulturen. Kulturen is the second oldest dedicated open-air museum in the world and consists of more than 30 buildings, as well as large collections on Scanian art, crafts. local archaeology and history. The museum was founded in 1892 by Georg Karlin. Today the museum often hosts different exhibitions and its visitors can experience how Swedish people lived and worked throughout the centuries.^[13]

Literature, art, and cinema[link]

Numerous prominent figures from the literary world lived and worked in Lund, often in association with the university and theatre. They are listed below with notable natives.

The city has a vivid tradition in music and theatre, stimulated by the church, university, schools, student musical festivities, and the Spex tradition (parodistic musical plays, often setting well-known music to new lyrics and mixing up the historical and the present in unconventional intrigues) and, especially, the "Lund Carnival" (for which see the special section).

Lund has long been a regional centre for classical and church music. In particular, Lund is renowned for its vibrant amateur choir scene, with choirs such as Carolinae damkör, Domkyrkokören, Katedralkören, Lunds akademiska kör, Lund Chamber Choir (Swedish: Lunds Kammarkör), Lunds Studentsångförening, Lunds vokalensemble, and the Svanholm Singers. Since 2006, Lund has been the host of the biannual Lund International Choral Festival.^[14] In more recent decades, Lund has also developed a lively pop and jazz scene.

The concluding scenes in Ingmar Bergman's classic film Wild Strawberries were set in, and were shot, in Lund.

Lundakarnevalen[link]

The Lund carnival has been held every four years since the mid-nineteenth century: traditional accounts say it originated at a wedding in 1849 (the four-year intervals place the party in 2002, 2006, 2010, etc.). Arranged by the students of the university, from the 1950s onwards the event has grown in size and intensity (with some 5500 volunteers 2010), but it remains an amateur event. Midway between a music and stage fair, a city festival, and an outpouring of satire, parody and general madness. Some students dress up in costumes, often relating to and poking fun at current issues, and parade in wagons. Others perform humorous skits in the evenings. The carnival revues and other stage entertainments have launched a number of well-known entertainers and actors over the years.

Sports[link]

Lund is not a notable center for sports except for handball, where it has two teams in the men's top league: H 43 and LUGI and two teams in the women's top league: H43/Lundagård and LUGI. It also has a chess team, Lunds ASK, that for decades has been among the top teams in Sweden. Lund is also the birthplace of the online football manager game Hattrick. Lund also has a Division 1 football club called Lunds BK. Lund hosted matches from the 2011 Handball World Championship in the Färs och Frosta Sparbank Arena.

Industry[link]

Lund is a centre of high tech companies, such as Sony Ericsson, Ericsson Mobile Platforms, Doro and other telecommunication companies. The Lund Institute of Technology has historical connections with the industrial economy. A business park, Ideon, is for high tech companies that have ties to the university.

Other important industries include medical technology (Gambro), pharmaceuticals, biotechnology (Active Biotech, among others), heat exchanger and separator (Alfa Laval), and publishing and library services. The hospital and the university in Lund are two other major employers, with extensive research facilities.

Astra Zeneca offices closed down in 2010 and has been replaced by Ideon Medicon Village.

Lund is home to the Tetra Pak company, which manufactures and markets paper packaging and equipment for milk, orange juice, etc. all over the world.

Education[link]

• Lund University
• Lund Institute of Technology
• Lund School of Economics and Management
• Royal Swedish Physiographic Society

Notable natives and residents[link]

• Klas Anshelm, architect
• Axwell, professional DJ
• Rolf-Göran Bengtsson, Olympic equestrian
• Martin Dahlin, footballer
• Timbuktu (Jason Diakité), hip-hop and reggae artist
• Kim Ekdahl du Rietz, handball player
• Mikael Håfström, film writer and director
• Amanda Jenssen, singer and Idol competitor
• Joachim Johansson, tennis player
• Helena Josefsson, singer
• Roger Ljung, footballer
• Jan Malmsjö, actor
• Lukas Moodysson, film writer, director
• Ivo Pekalski, footballer
• The Radio Dept., band
• Ola Svensson, pop singer
• Max von Sydow, actor
• Linus Thörnblad, Olympic high jumper
• Elin Wägner, feminist writer
• Måns Zelmerlöw, pop singer

Literary residents[link]

• Vilhelm Ekelund, poet
• Hjalmar Gullberg, writer, poet and translator
• Ola Hansson, writer, poet and critic
• Carl Linnaeus, scientist and author
• Axel Lundegård, writer
• Anders Österling, writer, poet, translator and critic
• Lars Norén, poet and playwright
• Bengt Lidforss, natural scientist and writer
• Göran Sonnevi, poet and translator
• August Strindberg, playwright
• Esaias Tegnér, writer and bishop

See also[link]

• Lund Principle, an important principle in ecumenical relations between Christian churches.
• Uppsala

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lund

• Lunds Kommun - Official site
• Visitlund.se Tourist information

v t e Municipalities and seats of Scania County Municipalities Ängelholm Åstorp Båstad Bjuv Bromölla Burlöv Eslöv Hässleholm Helsingborg Höganäs Höör Hörby Kävlinge Klippan Kristianstad Landskrona Lomma Lund Malmö Örkelljunga Osby Östra Göinge Perstorp Simrishamn Sjöbo Skurup Staffanstorp Svalöv Svedala Tomelilla Trelleborg Vellinge Ystad Municipal seats Ängelholm Arlöv Åstorp Båstad Bjuv Broby Bromölla Eslöv Hässleholm Helsingborg Höganäs Höör Hörby Kävlinge Klippan Kristianstad Landskrona Lomma Lund Malmö Örkelljunga Osby Perstorp Simrishamn Sjöbo Skurup Staffanstorp Svalöv Svedala Tomelilla Trelleborg Vellinge Ystad Counties of Sweden Sweden

v t e 50 most populous urban areas in the Nordic countries  Denmark  Finland  Iceland  Norway  Sweden 1.  Stockholm 1,372,565 2.  Copenhagen 1,199,224 3.  Helsinki 1,061,798 4.  Oslo 907,288 5.  Gothenburg 549,839 6.  Malmö 280,415 7.  Turku 253,332 8.  Aarhus 252,107 9.  Bergen 234,800 10.  Stavanger 221,616 11.  Tampere 215,337 12.  Reykjavik 195,000 13.  Odense 167,615 14.  Trondheim 160,072 15.  Oulu 144,114 16.  Uppsala 140,454 17.  Jyväskylä 132,115 18.  Fredrikstad 126,971 19.  Aalborg 124,921 20.  Västerås 110,877 21.  Örebro 107,038 22.  Linköping 104,232 23.  Lahti 102,383 24.  Drammen 100,023 25.  Kuopio 97,610 26.  Helsingborg 97,122 27.  Jönköping 89,396 28.  Kouvola 87,548 29.  Norrköping 87,247 30.  Skien 86,923 31.  Pori 83,156 32.  Lund 82,800 33.  Umeå 79,594 34.  Joensuu 73,807 35.  Lappeenranta 72,156 36.  Esbjerg 71,576 37.  Gävle 71,033 38.  Kristiansand 67,547 39.  Hämeenlinna 67,293 40.  Tromsø 66,669 41.  Borås 66,273 42.  Eskilstuna 64,679 43.  Södertälje 64,619 44.  Karlstad 61,685 45.  Täby 61,272 46.  Rovaniemi 60,699 47.  Randers 60,656 48.  Vaasa 60,491 49.  Seinäjoki 58,836 50.  Halmstad 58,577

Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans
Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival
Background information
Also known as	Corb Lund Band
Origin	Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Genres	Country Folk Bluegrass Indie
Years active	1995–present
Labels	New West
Website	corblund.com
Members
Corb Lund Kurt Ciesla Grant Siemens Brady Valgardson

Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans are a Canadian country music band, formerly known as the Corb Lund Band.

Corb Lund[link]

Corb Lund, the lead singer, grew up in Southern Alberta living on his family's farm and ranches near Taber, Cardston and Rosemary. He is proud of being an Albertan.^[1] Lund left his hometown of Taber and moved to Edmonton, where he enrolled in the Grant MacEwan College to study jazz guitar and bass.

Lund was a founding member of The Smalls, who sold over 35,000 albums over a twelve year span, all released independently. Lund and the Smalls toured extensively in Canada, the United States and Europe, including a stint in Bosnia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. The band retired in the fall of 2001.

The Hurtin' Albertans[link]

Hurtin' Albertans is Corb Lund's touring band. They have released five albums to critical acclaim.^[2][3] The band tours regularly in Canada, the United States and Australia. Much of their time is spent in the Canadian Prairies and the American southwest.

The band's members are:

• Kurt Ciesla, bass
• Grant "Demon" Siemens, guitar and other strings
• Brady Valgardson, drums

Siemens is the only member who is not Albertan, hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Farmer/drummer Valgardson and Lund are from Taber, Alberta.

The band has toured Europe, where they played the UK Glastonbury Festival, and Australia several times. The group was featured the movie "Slither" (2006) and were part of the soundtrack to the 2008 documentary, "Holler Back: (Not) Voting in an American Town." They have also provided accompaniment for an NBC special in 2006, on which Olympic gold medalist and fellow Albertan, Kurt Browning, performed a figure skating routine to “Expectation and the Blues”. Their music can also be heard in the ski film "Nine Winters Old."

Corb Lund signed a two-album deal with New West Records (home of Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson and other major artists) in 2009. His first record on New West, "Losin' Lately Gambler," was released in September 2009.

Corb Lund and the Hurtin Albertans played their 2009 single "Long Gone to Saskatchewan" in Ottawa for the 2011 Canada Day ceremonies in the presence of the newlywed Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge on their Royal visit to Canada.^[4]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Singles[link]

Music videos[link]

Awards[link]

JUNO Awards (Canada)[link]

• 2010 Roots & Traditional Album of the Year (Solo) (nominated)
• 2008 year Roots & Traditional Album of the Year (Solo) (nominated)
• 2006 Roots & Traditional Album of the Year (Solo) (WON)
• 2003 Roots & Traditional Album of the Year (Group) (nominated)

Americana Music Association’s Americana Honors & Awards Show[link]

• 2010 Emerging Artist of the Year (nominated)
• 2010 Albums of the Year: #38

Gold Records[link]

• 2002: Five Dollar Bill (As ranked by the Canadian Recording Industry Association)
• 2005: Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer (As ranked by the Canadian Recording Industry Association)

Canadian Country Music Association Awards[link]

• 2010 Roots Artist of the Year (WON)
• 2009 Roots Artist of the Year (WON)
• 2008 Roots Artist of the Year (WON)
• 2007 Roots Artist or Group of the Year (WON)
• 2006 Album of The Year (WON)
• 2006 Roots Artist or Group of the Year (WON)
• 2006 Album Design of the Year (Jeff Sylvester) (WON)
• 2005 Independent Group or Duo of the Year (WON)
• 2005 Roots Artist or Group of the Year (WON)
• 2004 Independent Group or Duo of the Year (WON)
• 2004 Roots Artist or Group of the Year (WON)

Western Canadian Music Awards[link]

• 2008 Outstanding Roots Recording (WON)
• 2006 Outstanding Independent Recording (WON)
• 2006 Outstanding Roots Recording (WON)
• 2006 Songwriter of the Year (WON)
• 2005 Entertainer of the Year (WON)
• 2003 Outstanding Album (Independent) (WON)

CMC Music Awards (Australia)[link]

• 2011 International Artist of the Year (nominated)

Canadian Folk Music Awards[link]

• 2008 English Songwriter of the Year (WON)

U.S. Independent Music Awards[link]

• 2007 Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter Album (nominated)
• 2003 Country/Bluegrass Album of the Year (nominated)

Country Music Association (Australia)[link]

• 2007 Global Country Artist Award (nominated)

Indie Acoustic Project[link]

• Best Lyrics, “Best CDs of 2007” Awards (WON)
• Best Male Singer-Songwriter, “Best CDs of 2006” Awards (nominated)

The Indies (Canadian Independent Music Awards)[link]

• 2008 Favourite Folk Artist/Group (WON)
• 2007 Favourite Country Artist, Group or Duo of the Year (WON)
• 2006 Favourite Folk Artist/Group (WON)

French Association of Country Music (France)[link]

• 2006 Independent Artist of the Year (WON)
• 2005 Independent Artist of the Year (WON)

Canadian Association for Campus Activities[link]

• 2007 Best Contemporary Music (Recording) (WON)

Artist also appears on[link]

2005[link]

• Carolyn Mark - Just Married: An Album of Duets CD, “Sweet Thing”, Mint

2006[link]

• Slither: Music from the Motion Picture CD, “(Gonna) Shine Up My Boots”, Bulletproof Recording Company Inc.
• Various Artists 30 Years of Stony Plain CDs, “The Truth Comes Out”, Stony Plain
• Worlds Best Award Winning Country Vol. 5- World’s Best Award Winning Country CD, “Truck Got Stuck”, Pid

2007[link]

• Various Artists Gift: A Tribute to Ian Tyson CD, “MC Horses”, Stony Plain

Charity work[link]

In March 2008, the United Nations Children's Fund announced that the band had donated the use of the song "Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier" as the theme song of UNICEF Team Canada, the Canadian national equestrian skill-at-arms team, to support the team's work with UNICEF to provide food and medical care to AIDS orphans and infants infected with HIV in the third world.

In March 2010, Lund appeared as part of Young Artists for Haiti to record a benefit version of K'naan's song "Wavin' Flag".

On July 11, 2010, Lund headlined the Medicine Hat Flood Relief Show, which raised $68,000 for Canadian Red Cross 2010 Flood Relief campaign, which benefits those affected by the disastrous flooding in Southern Alberta.

Lund participated in a charity poker tournament in support of the Centre for Family Literacy in Edmonton, Alberta, on October 22, 2010.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Corb Lund official website
• Corb Lund at New West Records

Janis Joplin
Background information
Birth name	Janis Lyn Joplin
Also known as	Pearl Mary Jane
Born	(1943-01-19)January 19, 1943 Port Arthur, Texas, United States
Died	October 4, 1970(1970-10-04) (aged 27) Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres	Blues rock, soul, psychedelic rock, acid rock, country, folk, hard rock, jazz blues
Occupations	Singer, songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, auto-harp, harmonica, piano, percussion
Years active	1962–1970
Labels	Columbia
Associated acts	Big Brother and the Holding Company Kozmic Blues Band Full Tilt Boogie Band Grateful Dead

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and songwriter from Port Arthur, Texas. As a youth Joplin was ridiculed by her fellow students due to her unconventional appearance and personal beliefs. She later sang about her experience at school through her song "Ego Rock". Early in her life, Joplin cultivated a rebellious and unconventional lifestyle, becoming a beatnik poet. She began her singing career as a folk and blues singer in San Francisco, playing clubs and bars with her guitar and auto-harp.

Joplin first rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic-acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist with her more soulful and bluesy backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band. She was one of the more popular acts at the Monterey Pop Festival and later became one of the major attractions to the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour.

Janis Joplin only charted five singles in her life but her hits and other popular songs from throughout her short four year career include "Down On Me", "Bye, Bye Baby", "Coo Coo", "Summertime", "Piece of My Heart", "Turtle Blues", "Ball 'n' Chain", "Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)", "Maybe", "To Love Somebody", "Kozmic Blues", "Work Me, Lord", "Move Over", "Cry Baby", "A Woman Left Lonely" "Get It While You Can", "My Baby", "Trust Me", "Mercedes Benz", "One Night Stand", "Raise Your Hand" 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 Rock and Roll" as well as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul" and became known as Pearl amongst her friends. She was also a painter, dancer and music arranger.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004,^[1] and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.^[2]

Early life: 1943–1961[link]

Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on (1943-01-19)January 19, 1943,^[3] to Dorothy (née East) Joplin (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the Church of Christ.^[4] The Joplins felt that Janis always needed more attention than their other children, with her mother stating, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied without [receiving a lot of attention]. The normal rapport wasn't adequate."^[5]

As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by African-American blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Lead Belly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer.^[6] She began singing in the local choir and expanded her listening to blues singers such as Odetta, Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton.

Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she stated that she was mostly shunned.^[6] Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers."^[5] As a teen, she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which required dermabrasion.^[5][7][8] Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak" or "creep."^[5] Among her classmates were G. W. Bailey and Jimmy Johnson.

Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer^[7] and later the University of Texas at Austin, though she did not complete her studies.^[9] The campus newspaper The Daily Texan ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares To Be Different."^[9] The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin."^[9]

Singing career: 1962-1965[link]

Joplin's house at 122 Lyon Street in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, California. She lived there in the 1960s with her boyfriend Country Joe McDonald.^[10]

Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after the Beat poets. Her first song recorded on tape, at the home of a fellow student in December 1962, was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do".^[11] She left Texas for San Francisco ("just to get away from Texas," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"^[12]) in January 1963, living in North Beach and later Haight-Ashbury. In 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, further accompanied by Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter (as a percussion instrument). This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble In Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues", and was later released as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape.

Around this time, her drug use increased, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin use.^[3][6][7] She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite beverage was Southern Comfort.

In early 1965, Joplin's friends, noticing the physical effects of her amphetamine habit (she was described as "skeletal"^[6] and "emaciated"^[3]), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. In May 1965, Joplin's friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return home.^[3] Back in Port Arthur, she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, began wearing relatively modest dresses, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as a sociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman. Joplin became engaged to a man who visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but the man terminated plans for the marriage soon afterwards.^[8]

Just prior to joining Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin recorded seven studio tracks in 1965. Among the songs she recorded was her original composition for her song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995 titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley.

Big Brother and the Holding Company: 1966–1968[link]

Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, circa 1966 – 1967.

In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, a band that had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who had known her in Texas and who at the time was managing Big Brother. Helms brought her back to San Francisco and Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966.^[13] Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, she was photographed at an outdoor concert that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drug use for several weeks, enjoining bandmate Dave Getz to promise that using needles would not be allowed in their rehearsal space or in her apartment or in the homes of her bandmates whom she visited.^[8] When a visitor injected drugs in front of Joplin and Getz, Joplin angrily reminded Getz that he had broken his promise.^[8] A San Francisco concert from that summer was recorded and released in the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. They often partied with the Grateful Dead, who lived less than two miles away.

On August 23, 1966,^[14] during a four week engagement in Chicago, the group signed a deal with independent label Mainstream Records.^[15] Joplin relapsed into drinking when she and her bandmates (except for Peter Albin) joined some "alcoholic hipsters," as Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn described them, in Chicago. The band recorded tracks in a Chicago recording studio, but the label owner Bob Shad refused to pay their airfare back to San Francisco.^[6] Shortly after four of the five musicians drove from Chicago to Northern California with very little money (Albin traveled by plane), they returned to Lagunitas. It was there that Joplin relapsed into intravenous drug use. Nancy Gurley was an enabler.^[6] Three years later, Joplin, by then using a different band, was informed of Gurley's death from an overdose.^[6]

The Mantra-Rock Dance promotional poster featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company.

One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple.^[16][17][18]

In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months.^[3][15] Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California.^[15]

Monterey and breakthrough[link]

The band's debut studio album, Big Brother and the Holding Company, was released by Columbia Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival.^[12] The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby," "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo," all of which Joplin sang lead vocals on.

Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey were filmed. "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball 'n' Chain" appear in the DVD box set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. The film captured Cass Elliot, of The Mamas & the Papas, seated in the audience silently mouthing "Wow! That's really heavy!" during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain".^[6] Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the film that was released to theaters nationwide in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend Monterey Pop saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the box set.

After switching managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen in 1966, the group signed with top artist manager Albert Grossman, whom they met for the first time at Monterey Pop. For the remainder of 1967, Big Brother performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968,^[19] the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater.^[3][6] On April 7, 1968, the last day of their East Coast tour, Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the "Wake for Martin Luther King, Jr." concert in New York.

Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month later, Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968, was recorded by Owsley Stanley.

In early 1968, Joplin and Big Brother made their nationwide television debut on The Dick Cavett Show, an ABC daytime variety show hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape. Over the next two years, she made three appearances on the primetime Cavett program, and all were preserved. By 1968, the band was being billed as "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company",^[15] and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band.^[15] The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip," while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them.^[15]

Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement," and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock... she slinks like tar, scowls like war... clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener."^[5]

[edit] Cheap Thrills

For her first major studio recording, Janis played a major role in the arrangement and production of the recordings that would become Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. During the recording, Joplin was said to be the first person to enter the studio and the last person to leave. Footage of Joplin and the band in the studio shows Joplin in great form and taking charge during the recording for "Summertime". The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings.^[3] The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a cocktail glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968,^[20] the album launched Joplin's successful, albeit short, musical career.^[21]

Cheap Thrills reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, remaining for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks.^[21] The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release.^[8][15] The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968.^[22]

The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night final gig together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to honor and exult in the last official night of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The lead-in groups for this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Janis gave one last performance with Big Brother at a Family Dog benefit on December 1, 1968.^[3][6]

Solo career: 1969–1970[link]

Kozmic Blues Band[link]

After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians as well as Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays.^[3][6][8] The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a more bluesy, funky, soul, pop-oriented sound than most of the hard-rock psychedelic bands of the period.

By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day,^[7] although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!. Gabriel Mekler, who produced the Kozmic Blues, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that the singer had lived in his house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends.^[8]

Joplin's performance with The Kozmic Blues Band in Frankfurt was released in cinemas around this time. The film shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and also includes her interviews from the Royal Albert Hall and on a bus. Most of the performances from this concert were later used in the 1975 film Janis: The Way She Was and is considered one of her best with the Kozmic Blues Band. No security was used so by the end of the concert the stage was so packed with people the band could not see each other. Another film was released of the band's performance in Stockholm featuring Joplin's interpretation of Summertime.

The Kozmic Blues Band performed on many television shows with Joplin. On the Tom Jones television show, they performed "Little Girl Blue" and "Raise Your Hand", the latter with Jones singing a duet with Joplin. On one episode of The Dick Cavett Show, they performed "Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't get down. She also revealed that she was a big fan of the then unknown Tina Turner, saying that she was an incredible singer, dancer and show woman. Joplin and Turner also performed together on at least one occasion at Madison Square Garden.

[edit] I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

The Kozmic Blues album, released in September 1969, was certified gold later that year, but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills.^[21] Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the recording quality and engineering of the record as well as the musicianship were considered superior to her previous releases and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Janis' sensational vocal talents. Janis wanted a horn section similar to Chicago Transit Authority (band) and her voice had the dynamic qualities and range to not be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and that Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother...(if they'll have her)."^[3] Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post generally ignored the band's flaws and devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. In general the press concentrated more on her leaving Big Brother rather than the qualities of the new recording.

Columbia released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at #41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of Raise Your Hand was released and became a top ten hit. Containing other hits like Try (Just a Little Bit Harder), To Love Somebody and Little Girl Blue, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 weeks after its release.

Joplin performs with Tom Jones on his television show in late 1969.

Woodstock[link]

Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band toured North America and Europe throughout 1969, appearing at Woodstock in the late hours of Saturday, August 16. She performed until the early morning hours of Sunday, August 17. Her friend Peggy Caserta claimed in a 1973 book that she encouraged Joplin to perform at the festival. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. When she and the band were flown in by helicopter with Joan Baez from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd she instantly became incredibly nervous and giddy. The documentary film of the festival that was released to theaters the following year includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward her dressing room tent.^[23] By most accounts, Woodstock was not a happy affair for Joplin.^[3][6][7]

Faced with a ten hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, she shot heroin^[6][7] with Caserta and was drinking alcohol, so by the time she hit the stage, she was "three sheets to the wind."^[3] On stage her voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy and she found it hard to dance. Throughout her performance she frequently spoke to the crowd. She pulled through, however, and the audience was so pleased they cheered her on for an encore, to which she replied and sang Ball and Chain. Her performances of Kozmic Blues and Work Me, Lord at Woodstock are notable, though her voice breaks while she sings.

Joplin was ultimately unhappy with her performance and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included in the documentary film or the soundtrack, Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". Joplin however remained at Woodstock for the rest of the festival.

Laura Joplin said in an interview that Janis went straight home to Port Arthur following Woodstock. She was incredibly vibrant and happy after coming home and really loved the festival.

Madison Square Garden[link]

In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman claimed to have witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during a concert by The Rolling Stones at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman described Joplin during this performance as "so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent with mania."^[8]

During a Garden concert where she got solo billing on December 19, some observers believed she tried to incite the audience to riot.^[8] For part of this concert she was joined onstage by special guests Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield.

Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton, the audience watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes."^[15] In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of this June 1970 interview she already had performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time.

Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother without her. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was at Madison Square Garden in New York City on the night of December 19–20, 1969.^[3][15]

Full Tilt Boogie Band[link]

In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed the singer's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off."^[24] Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.^[15] Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time."^[6] Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her, "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks."^[6] Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about George was that he wasn't into drugs."^[6]

Joplin began using heroin again when she returned to the United States. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because of his witnessing her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California, her romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and her refusal to take some time off work and travel the world with him.^[6][25] Around this time she formed her new band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band.^[3][6][8] The band was composed mostly of young Canadian musicians and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie Band than she did with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!"^[3]

The Full Tilt Boogie Band began touring in May 1970. Joplin remained quite happy with her new group, which received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics.^[3] Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West in San Francisco on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form.^[6] It was around this time that Joplin began wearing multi-coloured feather boas in her hair. By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased.^[6]

Festival Express[link]

From June 28 to July 4, 1970, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie joined the all-star Festival Express train tour through Canada, performing alongside Buddy Guy, Rick Danko and The Band, Ten Years After, Grateful Dead, Delaney and Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia.^[6] They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary.^[6][15] Janis jammed with the other performers on the train and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest.

Joplin convinced The Band, who originally did not want to perform, to come telling them it was going to be a great party.

Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, Janis took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. She told the audience how great the tour was and presented the organisers with a case of Tequila. She then burst into a two hour set, starting with Tell Mama. Throughout this performance, Janis went into several banters where she spoke about her failed love life. She finished the night with long versions pf Get It While You Can and Ball and Chain.

Footage of her performance of the song Tell Mama in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s and the sound was included on the 1982 Farewell Song album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on that 1972 Joplin In Concert album. Video of the performances was included on the Festival Express DVD. Her full performances of Festival Express exist and have been released on bootlegs but all footage has yet to be released. In the Tell Mama video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in the May 1968 issue of Vogue), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin.^[3][6]

During the Festival Express tour, Joplin was accompanied by Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, who later wrote several articles and a book on Joplin. She told Dalton:

I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything ... It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me. I'm full of emotion and I want a release, and if you're on stage and if it's really working and you've got the audience with you, it's a oneness you feel.^[15]

[edit] Pearl

Among her last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In a June 25, 1970, appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high-school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state."^[26] In the August 3, 1970, Cavett broadcast, Joplin referred to her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, on August 6, 1970.

Joplin attended the reunion on August 14, accompanied by fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and her sister Laura, but it reportedly proved to be an unhappy experience for her.^[27] Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. Interviewed by Rolling Stone journalist Chet Flippo, she was reported to wear enough jewelry for a "Babylonian whore."^[6] When asked by a reporter during the reunion if Joplin entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles."^[3][3][5] Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the people who'd humiliated her a decade earlier in high school.^[3]

Joplin's last public performance, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts. A positive review appeared on the front page of The Harvard Crimson newspaper despite the facts that Full Tilt Boogie performed with makeshift sound amplifiers after their regular equipment was stolen in Boston.^[8]

During late August, September and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, who had produced recordings for The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was still enough usable material to compile a long-playing record.

The result of the sessions was the posthumously released Pearl (1971). It became the biggest selling album of her career^[21] and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee. Kristofferson had been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970.^[28] The opening track Move Over was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of the a cappella Mercedes Benz, written by Joplin, Bob Neuwirth and beat poet Michael McClure. The track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. The track Buried Alive In The Blues, to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. In 2003, Pearl was ranked No. 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel on August 24, 1970,^[29] which was located in Hollywood Heights near Sunset Sound Recorders^[6] where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur, California several times in July and August.^[3][6][7] She and Morgan became engaged to be married in early September^[5] even though he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of the many sessions when Joplin worked, much to her dismay.^[6] Much later Morgan told biographer Myra Friedman that as a non-musician he felt excluded while in the studio.^[8] He stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home for days at a time while Joplin stayed alone at the Landmark,^[8] although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house.

Peggy Caserta claimed in her 1973 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.^[7] Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess^[7] and owner of a clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury,^[7] said that by September 1970 she had resorted to smuggling marijuana throughout California^[7] and she checked into the Landmark that month because it attracted drug users.^[7] Joplin learned of Caserta's presence in Los Angeles and staying at the same hotel from a heroin dealer who made deliveries to the Landmark.^[7] Joplin begged Caserta for heroin^[7] and within a few days became a regular customer of that heroin dealer.^[7]

Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant Myra Friedman had taken part in an intervention with Joplin the previous winter.^[8] While they worked at Grossman's New York office during the Pearl sessions, they knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel but did not know it attracted drug users and dealers.^[8]

On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for Half Moon and Cry Baby.^[30] Then Full Tilt Boogie recorded the instrumental track for Buried Alive In The Blues.^[31] The session ended with Joplin, keyboardist Richard Bell (Canadian musician) and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon.^[32] Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted, or whose management had been contacted, by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday,^[27] which was October 9. Joplin, Bell and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition Happy Trails. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's taped greeting arrived at his home after her death.^[27]

The last recording Joplin completed was on October 1, 1970 – Mercedes Benz. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders^[6] to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites' song Buried Alive in the Blues, which the band had recorded one week earlier.^[33] She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day.^[24][15] At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone that Seth Morgan was staying at her home and using her pool table with other women he had met that day.^[8] In the studio she was heard expressing anger about this and about Morgan having broken a promise to visit her the previous night,^[8] although she also expressed joy about the progress of the sessions.^[8] She and band member Ken Pearson went from the studio to Barney's Beanery^[34] for drinks. After midnight, Joplin drove him and a male fan who tagged along to the Landmark Motor Hotel.^[8]

Death[link]

On Sunday October 4, 1970, producer Paul A. Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Hotel. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356C Cabriolet in the parking lot. Upon entering her room, he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.^[8][35] Cooke believes that Joplin had accidentally been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.^[36] Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both stood Joplin up the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and according to the book Going Down With Janis, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark Motor Hotel as they had promised to.^[6][7]

Joplin was cremated in the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Mortuary in Los Angeles; her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean and along Stinson Beach. The only funeral service was a private affair held at Pierce Brothers and attended by Joplin's parents and maternal aunt.^[24]

Joplin's will funded $1,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party, which took place October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share, located in San Anselmo, California, was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, fiancé, Seth Morgan and close friends, including tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, Bob Gordon, and road manager John Cooke.

Legacy[link]

Joplin's Porsche 356C in "Summer of Love – Art of the Psychedelic Era" (Whitney Museum, New York).

Joplin's death in October 1970 at the age of 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just sixteen days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix. Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice." Music columnist Jon Pareles of the New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable." Author Megan Terry claimed that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience.^[37]

In 1973, a book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Going Down With Janis by Peggy Caserta attracted a lot of attention with its opening line, which referred to her performing a sex act with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew would later describe Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend."^[6] According to an early 1990s statement by a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer she described (including the make and model of his car) in detail to her readers. According to Ellis Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar Caserta had been frequenting since Joplin was alive.^[6] Amburn quoted Caserta's friend Kim Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me."^[6] Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered.^[6]

According to biographers Alice Echols and Myra Friedman, Peggy Caserta was one of many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after the singer's death, while others died from overdoses.^[3][8] Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Echols.^[3] In 2000, Caserta appeared on-camera for a segment about Joplin on 20/20 (US television series).^[38]

Joplin, along with Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane, opened opportunities into the rock music business for future female singers.^[37] Stevie Nicks commented that after seeing Joplin perform, "I knew that a little bit of my destiny had changed. I would search to find that connection that I had seen between Janis and her audience. In a blink of an eye she changed my life."^[37][39]

Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast, by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, was an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art.^[40] Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, often including colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin, often in the company of actor Michael Pollard, frequented Limbo on St. Marks Place. The performer, well known to the store's employees, made a practice of putting aside vintage and other one-of-a-kind garments she favored on stage and off.

Leonard Cohen's 1974 song "Chelsea Hotel #2" is about Joplin.^[41] Likewise, lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia, is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death.^[42][43] Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her 1972 Come from the Shadows album, was a tribute to Joplin.^[44] Another notable song sung by Joan Baez, Children Of The Eighties mentions Joplin.

At the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, Nina Simone, who Janis admired greatly, commented on Joplin:

You know I made thirty-five albums, they bootlegged seventy. Oh, everybody took a chunk of me. And yesterday I went to see Janis Joplin's film here. And what distressed me the most, and I started to write a song about it, but I decided you weren't worthy. Because I figured that most of you are here for the festival. Anyway the point is it pained me to see how hard she worked. Because she got hooked into a thing, and it wasn't on drugs. She got hooked into a feeling and she played to corpses.

Simone also included Joplin in her song Stars and opened this act with a rendition of Little Girl Blue.

The 1979 film The Rose was loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally titled Pearl, after Joplin's nickname, and the title of her last album, it was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story.^[45][46] Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.

In 1988, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original bronze, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated in Port Arthur, Texas.^[47]

In 1992, the first major biography of Janis in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister, Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Janis enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show and that Janis while growing up in Texas had difficulties with some people at school, but not the entire school. Laura stated that Janis was really enthusiastic after performing at Woodstock in 1969.^[48]

Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. In November 2009, the Hall of Fame and museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series.^[49] Among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum Exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet with psychedelically designed painting, and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover.^[50] She was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series for 2009.^[51]

In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created with input from Janis's younger sister Laura plus Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim and packed houses and was held over several times, the demanding role of the singing Janis attracting rock vocalists from relative unknowns to pop stars Laura Branigan and Beth Hart. A national tour followed.^{[citation needed]}

There have been many attempts at making a film about Joplin. On June 13, 2010, producer Wyck Godfrey said Amy Adams starred in director Fernando Meirelles' biographical drama,^[52] titled Janis Joplin: Get It While You Can.^[45] Previous attempts have included Piece Of My Heart, which was to star Renée Zellweger or Brittany Murphy; The Gospel According To Janis, with director Penelope Spheeris and starring either Zooey Deschanel or P!nk; and an untitled film thought to be an adaptation of Laura Joplin's Off-Broadway play about her sister, with the show's star, Laura Theodore, attached.^[45]

Influence[link]

Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Florence Welch of Florence and The Machine spoke of Joplin's impact on her own musical prowess in an interview for Why Music Matters in a commercial against piracy:

I learnt about Janis from an anthology of female blues singers. Janis was a fascinating character who bridged the gap between psychedelic blues and soul scenes. She was so vulnerable, self-conscious and full of suffering. She tore herself apart yet on stage she was totally different. She was so unrestrained, so free, so raw and she wasn't afraid to wail. Her connection with the audience was really important. It seems to me the suffering and intensity of her performance go hand in hand. There was always a sense of longing, of searching for something. I think she really sums up the idea that soul is about putting your pain into something beautiful.

^{[citation needed]}

Discography[link]

Janis Joplin recorded four fully conceived studio albums in her career. Her first two albums were recorded with and fully credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company and the later two being solo albums. Previously unreleased studio and live material were added to these albums tracklistings and also released on the compilation Farewell Song in 1982. Joplins early performances from when she was a folk-blues singer have been released on several well received compilations through the years, one such compilation is the nine disc Blow All My Blues Away. In 2012 The Pearl Sessions were released giving an insight into her creative process.

As a popular psychedelic act of the late 1960's, many of Joplin's live concerts with Big Brother were professionally recorded and have been released on albums like Live at Winterland '68 and Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968.

Though most of her concerts were recorded during her solo career, few have been officially released, resulting in being heavily bootlegged.^{[citation needed]}

Big Brother and the Holding Company

Kozmic Blues Band

Full Tilt Boogie Band

Big Brother & the Holding Company / Full Tilt Boogie

Later collections

Filmography[link]

• Monterey Pop (1968)
• Petulia (1968)
• Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969)
• Janis: The Way She Was (1974)
• Comin’ Home (1988)
• Woodstock - The Lost Performances (1991)
• Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director’s Cut) (1994)
• Festival Express (2003)
• Nine Hundred Nights (2004)
• The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout
• Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005)
• This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show
• Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director’s Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009)
• Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009)

References[link]