Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing

By Ann Angel

Forty years after her death, Janis Joplin remains among the most compelling and influential figures in rock-and-roll history. Her story—told here with depth and sensitivity by author Ann Angel—is one of a girl who struggled against rules and limitations, yet worked diligently to improve as a singer. It’s the story of an outrageous rebel who wanted to be loved, and of a wild woman who wrote long, loving letters to her mom. And finally, it’s the story of one of the most iconic female musicians in American history, who died at twenty-seven. Janis Joplin includes more than sixty photographs, and an assortment of anecdotes from Janis’s friends and band mates. This thoroughly researched and well-illustrated biography is a must-have for all young artists, music lovers, and pop-culture enthusiasts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781683355977

Book preview

For Jeff—You always rock my world

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Angel, Ann, 1952–

Janis Joplin : rise up singing / Ann Angel.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8109-8349-6 (alk. paper)

eISBN 978-1-6833-5597-7

1. Joplin, Janis—Juvenile literature. 2. Singers—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. Rock musicians—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature. I. Title.

ML3930.J65A83 2010

782.42166092—dc22

[B]

2010005558

Text copyright © 2010 Ann Angel

Book design by Maria T. Middleton

Published in 2010 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [e-mail] or the address below.

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Contents

Introduction

1. Spreading Her Wings

2. Out of Port Arthur

3. Looking for Love

4. Call On Me

5. Monterey Pop’s Poster Child

6. Cheap Thrills, Drugs, and Self-Destruction

7. Kozmic Blues

8. To Love Somebody

9. Pearl

10. Love, Janis

Time Line

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Image Credits

Index of Searchable Terms

Introduction

Sam Andrew plays guitar while Janis sings. Band mate James Gurley is in the background. After playing together in Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Kozmic Blues, Janis and Sam remained friends.

Janis Joplin was my best friend. I played with her more nights and days than any other musician in her life. We were both obsessed with how to make the music better. When we drove home after playing, all we talked about was how to improve what we were doing. What an intro would do here, what a series of notes would do there, when the drummer should come in, how this song would be better than that song as a final tune.

Janis was the most powerful person I have ever known, and yet she was completely insecure at the same time. She was the Queen of the Scene and the chambermaid, simultaneously. It was always, Hey, how was I? Do you think they liked it? I mean, it was all right, wasn’t it? What do you think? Tell me. I want to know. You like me, don’t you? You really like me, right? Don’t just stand there—tell me what you think. Was I good? Did I do all right?

From a person as talented as Janis was, such questions could be unnerving. Her talent was so obvious, but often she couldn’t see it herself. People discount what they do best, because they think, Well, hey, this is easy, anybody can do this, so what’s so special? Janis made me realize that what we do best, all of us, is natural to us, and easy to take for granted. This is completely understandable, and yet it is important for each of us to appreciate our natural gifts, and take pride in them.

We all like to pretend that we are above caring what others think of us, and that we can be indifferent to both praise and blame in our better moments, but alas, we often fall short. Janis was no exception. She may even have cared too much what people said about her. We were somewhere—New York, Cleveland, maybe even San Francisco—and a critic wrote, Janis Joplin has true melisma in her singing. She had to look up melisma in the dictionary, where it was described as many different scale tones used over the same word in singing, a common vocal technique in Gospel or choir music. After she had learned what it meant, Janis didn’t stop saying the word melisma for a week. That’s the way she was about praise. She couldn’t get enough of it.

Janis loved Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey—real pioneers in blues, singing in an era (the 1920s) when it really counted to sing with feeling and power. You can hear their influence in Janis’s singing. Janis herself showed the way for people like Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Fiona Apple, Pink, and Lady Gaga—each one exhibits some facet of that Janis character and style. She was vulnerable, powerful, super wide open, talented, and interesting in a kind of terrifying way.

Many writers wrote that when Janis died, it was somehow a suicide, or maybe even that the music industry had murdered her. This is all as untrue as it is completely beside the point. It’s important to realize that Janis had more fun than ten people; she was always alive, completely energetic, funny—very funny—and strong. She was nobody’s victim. It wasn’t somehow ordained by fate that Janis should die so young. Her death was an accident. Janis had big appetites. If it was food, then she wanted to eat the most. If it was drink, then she, naturally, wanted to drink the most. If it was life and living, then she lived it, crackling with energy and cackling with laughter, wanting the most from every minute. There was electricity in the air when Janis was around, and I will always miss her.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

The Kozmic Blues

1

Spreading Her Wings

Janis Joplin’s school photo, taken in the tenth grade, shows her wearing a white blouse and sporting a curly bob, typical of the styles of the 1950s.

The popular girls wore their hair short and perfectly curled, with tiny bows fastened at their temples. Their skirts swung demurely as they walked down the school halls. The round Peter Pan collars of their blouses were buttoned neatly and decorated with tasteful circle pins and pearl necklaces. The girls were pretty and petite, their soft, jingling southern laughs drawing smiles from teachers and from the boys who jostled for their attention.

Janis Joplin had only to look in the mirror to see frizzy brown waves of hair that refused to be tamed and a plump face spotted with acne. She was heavier than the other girls. Louder too. When she laughed, it came out as a cackle or a raspy, flat hah!

This yearbook photo shows Janis as a member of an extracurricular group, one of many she participated in, which included the Future Teachers of America, the Slide Rule Club, and the Glee Club. Janis is in the front row, on the far right.

She was smart and well read, but brains weren’t a ticket

Reviews for Janis Joplin

[jrobinw · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is written for the young adult but is written well enough that an older adult will also enjoy it.

[meblack19 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the best short biographies that I have ever read. The author did a fantastic job capturing the complexities of Janis Joplin as well as her talent and intelligence. The end pages and detailing around the text, as well as the table of contents, can only be described as psychedelic. The text was so captivating that I could not put this book down. There were plenty of photographs to supplement the text as well. There's also a timeline, acknowledgments, notes, a bibliography, image credits, an index, and information about the author that enhance the book even more. I would not recommend that this book be put in high school classrooms because it discusses Janis's use of drugs and alcohol and does contain unsuitable language for children and teens, but it is nonetheless a great book.

[breeankay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

4Q, 3P (my voya codes). Janis Joplin was an amazing vocal talent. Her career was tragically cut short (spending only about 3 yrs in the spotlight) with her death at age 27, and yet, she managed to leave an indelible mark on music history. While Angel gives an accurate biographical account of Janis' struggles with drugs, alcohol, and self-esteem, she doesn't go very deep into who Janis was. Interviews with people who knew her give a glimpse, but I would have liked to see more quotes directly from Janis herself. Thankfully, Angel included 60+ photographs which help to show Janis herself and Janis the persona. Even though this is book is a YALSA winner, I can't help but wonder how relevant Janis rates among teens today.

[lindap69 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Janis Joplin is one of my all-time favorites and I realized how little I knew about her; I brought out all my old albums and had a nostalgic weekend!

[satyridae · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I mostly loved this biography of Joplin that's aimed at young adults, but there's the huge elephant standing in the middle of it that ruined it for me.

The facts given jibe with the rest of the biographies I've read (and I've read 'em all). The author's love and reverence for the subject inform the book without glossing over any of Joplin's shortcomings. The photographs are lovely, of course. The introduction by Sam Andrew is very touching. The digressions about the sixties are fairly well-done. Joplin's addictions are discussed at length, as are her numerous failed heterosexual relationships.

But nowhere at all is there the whisper of the fact that Janis never limited herself to heterosexual relationships. She had several well documented relationships with women, and I can't understand why that entire facet of Joplin was ignored.

It's a dealbreaker for me, the whitewashing of history. So I'm dinging this otherwise perfectly interesting book a star.

******Edited 1/9
Re-read it very carefully today, and found this, on page 28:

"Always hungry for affection, she compulsively sought attention from both men and women. Friends speculate that she had her first lesbian experiences in college. She didn't speak openly about her affairs with women, and in an era when homosexuality and bisexuality were stigmatized, she may not have felt that she could: however, the intensity of her interactions with certain women indicates that some of them may have been more than friends. (In particular, she and her friend Juli Paul were known for crazed, drunken fights that they sometimes carried into the streets.) In the years to come, Janis would be more open to friends and lovers about her bisexuality, although in the course of her life, she had many more relationships with men than with women."

That's it. Sum total. Not enough, sorry. One single little paragraph is, indeed, better than the total absence of acknowledgment I found the first time through, but no. When there are pages and pages devoted to analyzing her heterosexual relationships, discussing the men by name and talking about what color eyes they had... no.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This exceptional portrait of Janis Joplin is admiring but also frank in discussing her flaws and self-destructive personality. Angel manages to explore all dimensions of Janis in a relatively brief narrative--the outsider and nonconformist growing up in small-town Port Arthur, Texas, her retreat into painting, finding her voice in music, her influences and sensibilities as a musician, her bisexuality, inability to maintain long-term relationships, insecurity about her appearance and talent, and almost pathological need for attention and acceptance, the two personas she had in public and private, her remarkable but short-lived musical career, and her addictions to drugs and alcohol that would lead to her tragic death at age 27. Angel reveals all the fascinating contraditions and tragic ironies in Joplin's life.

Teen readers will appreciate most Janis's headstrong individuality, her flamboyance and her insecurities.

I would have liked to have known more about Janis's influence on female musicians who came after her and how music critics and historians compare her to her greatest influences like Bessie Smith and Odetta. The book also needs a discography.

[jennanana_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Biography of Janis Joplin focusing on her drug use and her life mainly before hitting it big as a rock star. Portrays her in a way in which we don't usually see, and provides a lot of information about who she was growing up. Doesn't really focus too much on her as a star, but rather who she was as a person. Lots of great photos and artwork to look at.

[ewyatt_16 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A biography of Janis Joplin, telling the tale of her rise to stardom and her drive to create. The narrative tells a story of the Janis' stage persona and her desire for acceptance and approval. The book also situates Janis' career within the context of the larger music scene of the 1960s. The design of the book is striking, colorful and psychedelic with photographs peppered throughout the text.

[warriorlibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Quick read on an interesting subject.

[sunnyreader71 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great looking and well researched book that clearly came from a place of love.While it doesn't gloss over the sadness of her life the book is clearly meant to be as happy and pretty as Janis is on the cover.

[lawral_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This well-researched biography of Janis Joplin starts at her high school in Port Arther, Texas and follows her life and career to their untimely end a little over 10 years later. It's full of (awesome) pictures, is not bogged down by the recitation of dates, has a great bibliography for further reading, a chronology, and a brief index. It is a biography that you can give, with confidence, to teens looking for more information on a great artist or someone interesting to write about for an assignment.But Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing is more than the average biography. Angel brings Joplin to life. She manages to balance personal Janis and rockstar Janis on the page, something real life Janis always struggled with. The result is a history of the era and environment that produced Joplin the icon, as well as the story of how normal kids, like Joplin, dealt with all the changes the 60s brought about. Anecdotes from Joplin's friends and band mates appear throughout the text as do professional pictures of Joplin and her bands. The most quoted person in the book is Laura, Joplin's little sister. Sex, drugs and rock n'roll are definitely present in the book, and the over the top drug use is discussed, but Angel shows that Joplin's drug use was never her biggest problem. It was Joplin's need for love and attention that drove her to perform, and it was her fans' love of her drugged-up persona that drove her to use.But it was Joplin's voice that made her a success, and somehow that comes through on the page. Maybe it was just that I had "Piece of My Heart" and "Me and Bobby McGee" stuck in my head for most of the time I spent reading this book (until "Mercedes Benz" was mentioned of course), but I thought Angel conveyed the grit and soul of Joplin's voice amazingly. Readers will be clamouring to find copies of Joplin's music with her various bands after reading this, if that music wasn't what prompted them to pick up this biography in the first place. If it was, they'll be singing along.Book source: ARC picked up at ALA