Janis Lyn Joplin
Born:  January 19, 1943, Port Arthur, Texas
Died:  October 4, 1970, Los Angeles, California

Janis Joplin first began her singing career by singing in a local choir in Port Arthur, Texas. She also liked to paint. She once related that it was Bessie Smith and Leadbelly who influenced her most as a young singer. She also like to listen to Odetta and Big Mama Thornton. She first started singing the blues while in high school.

She graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1960. High School was not a good experience for her. She was often shunned by her peers. Even as a teenager, she dressed in her own style and lived life in her own way. She was rebellious against the strict rules most people lived their life by in the 1960s.

After graduation from High School, she attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas and later the University of Texas at Austin. She already was a heavy drinker by this time as well as a drug user, which would continue throughout her short life. Her liquor of choice was Southern Comfort.

In 1963 she left Texas and headed for San Francisco living in North Beach and Haight-Ashbury, working as a folk singer. This venture was not successful. She returned to Port Arthur in 1965 as a broken woman, ready to go back to school and live a "normal" life. She enrolled in Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas as a sociology major.
 
In 1966 she was once again given the chance to move back to San Francisco, but this time as a member of "Big Brother and The Holding Company." The band signed with indie label Mainstream Records and finished their first album "Cheap Thrills" in 1967. The album was released in 1968 and was very successful.
   
Joplin broke away from "Big Brother and The Holding Company" in 1969 and formed her own band "Kozmic Blues Band." This group was not successful. After that she put together another band "The Full Tilt Boogie Band." This band performed with her on her last album "Pearl," which was released posthumously in 1971. This album contained her most popular hit "Me and Bobby McGee" written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster.

On the Dick Cavett Show on June 25, 1970, Joplin announced she was going to attend her 10-year class reunion of Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur. In this interview, she related that while in high school she had been, "laughed out of class, out of school, out of town, out of the state."

It was while recording "Pearl" that Joplin died of an accidental and fatal overdose of heroin. Although she was a professional, long-term user of heroin, this particular batch was unusually pure. She was found dead in her hotel room. She was 27.

Joplin's mantra was "sex, drugs, rock-n-roll," and this was the lifestyle she led.

She was cremated and her ashes scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
 

Me and Bobby McGee

Summertime 

Source for RIAA Gold and Platinum Awards:  http://www.riaa.org/goldandplatinum.php