janis joplin me and bobby mcgee in concert 1970

Joplin and the woman she was dating went up to the future music legend and paid their compliments. She herself was impressed by Bob Dylan - still in the shadow of Joan Baez - when she encountered him at the first Monterey Folk Festival. That may seem like an odd fit, unless you remember that the folk revival was full of artists committed to studying and celebrating roots music that included the blues.īarefoot and wild-haired, a prototypical hippie, Joplin cut a distinctive figure in Texas and in San Francisco, where she wowed Jorma Kaukonen when he stumbled on her at a hootenanny. Her powerful voice was immediately apparent, and her first gigs saw her making a go of it as a 'folksinger,' accompanying herself on autoharp. She sought out black musicians in nearby cities like Beaumont and New Orleans, and eventually made her way to stages in cities like Austin - where she told her parents they should go to let her be an art major at the University of Texas so she could be like fellow Port Arthur native Robert Rauschenberg. She took her singing style straight from Thornton and other R&B greats, later including Otis Redding, which is one reason her singing is so elemental: she was white, but she knew in her bones where the blues came from. She was enraptured by music, but unlike the vast majority of viewers who saw Elvis Presley's game-changing 'Hound Dog' on The Ed Sullivan Show, Joplin actually tracked down the original 1953 version by 'Big Mama' Thornton. She emerged as an iconoclastic tomboy from her youth, and she always liked to party. At every turn, she kept it real and raw and raucous - at a time when that was rare enough for a male artist, let alone a performer who felt the constraints imposed on women. It's hard to wrap your mind around just how pioneering Janis Joplin was, George-Warren suggests. His daughter knew her share of disappointment, but she also saw astounding success - and she earned it on her own terms. Her mother and father supported her over the years - financially, when they could, and otherwise - but George-Warren suggests Joplin's father left her with a lingering sense of anxiety around what he called 'the great Saturday Night Swindle.' It was his way of saying that life had a way of conning people who think they're putting in lot of hard work so they can reap the reward on the weekend: that reward isn't guaranteed, and you might just be in for a life of disappointment. Janis Joplin, it seems, was born free when she arrived in 1943, the oldest child of middle-class parents in the oil town of Port Arthur, Texas. 'You may be free,' he said, evoking the metaphor of a double-edged sword, 'but it can be painful to be that free.' Kris Kristofferson, writer of the song 'Me and Bobby McGee' that Joplin seized on as one of her signature numbers, later reflected on why the line 'freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose' resonated so strongly with the singer. Although, as George-Warren notes, like any successful performer she worked to craft her character, the emotional intensity that marked her performances was no show. She brought her whole being to the stage. Free love? She was famously free, openly bisexual and, in George-Warren's description, polyamorous. Substance issues? She was so often photographed holding bottles of Southern Comfort that the company sent her a fur coat. She lived loud and proud, flaunting a joie de vivre that made jaws drop both onstage and off.

Given her iconic status and brief career, there isn't exactly an aura of mystery around Joplin.

Janis joplin me and bobby mcgee in concert 1970