1936 Big Pete Pearson*
1948 Duke Robillard*
1953 Oscar Wilson*
1957 Slinky Williams*
1970 Janis Joplin Todestag+
1977 Nickolas Galiouris*
1994 Danny Gatton+
Happy Birthday
Duke Robillard *04.10.1948
Duke Robillard (* 4. Oktober 1948 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island; eigentlich Michael Robillard) ist ein US-amerikanischer Blues-Sänger und -Gitarrist.
Robillard erregte erstmals 1967 in Westerley (Rhode Island) als Gründer von Roomful of Blues Aufmerksamkeit. 1979 verließ er die Band wieder um Leadgitarrist für Robert Gordon zu werden. Danach war er kurzzeitig Mitglied der Legendary Blues Band. 1981 gründete er dann die Duke Robillard Band, die sich bald in Duke Robillard & the Pleasure Kings umbenannten. Nachdem die Band 1984 einen Plattenvertrag bei Rounder Records bekam, veröffentlichte sie eine Reihe von Alben und trennte sich 1990 wieder.
Noch im gleichen Jahr ersetzte Robillard zusammen mit Doug Bangham Jimmie Vaughan bei den Fabulous Thunderbirds, die sich bald darauf trennten. Von da an arbeitete Robillard als Solo-Künstler, der in den 1990ern und 2000ern eine Vielzahl von Alben auf den Markt brachte. Er wird auch auf Chris Florys Album Blues in My Heart (2003) herausgestellt. Seit 5. April 2013 spielt er in Bob Dylans "Band".
Michael John "Duke" Robillard (born October 4, 1948, Woonsocket, Rhode Island) is an American blues musician.
After playing in various bands and working for the Guild Guitar Company, he co-founded the band Roomful of Blues with pianist Al Copley in 1967.[1] He has also been a member of The Fabulous Thunderbirds which included Kim Wilson, replacing Jimmie Vaughan on guitar. Also experienced in jazz, swing, and rock and roll, aside from his preferred blues music, Robillard has been generally regarded as a guitar player keeping the blues style of T-Bone Walker.
He has recorded with artists such as Jimmy Witherspoon, Snooky Prior, Jay McShann, Hal Singer, Pinetop Perkins, Joe Louis Walker, Todd Sharpville, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. In the summer of 2006, Robillard accompanied Tom Waits on a tour of the Southern United States.
Session work
Robillard has contributed to a large number of musicians' recordings in his career. Some of the most famous have been mentioned, but others include artists as diverse as Wham! and Jimmy Witherspoon.
Robillard was hired by Tom Waits, who was looking for a blues guitarist and a master of American roots music for his Orphans Tour. Although Robillard did not record with Waits, the 2006 dates were widely bootlegged. Robillard's latest album Tales from the Tiki Lounge, was a tribute to Les Paul, and he played an array of Gold Tops and other Les Paul models, plus an Epiphone Broadway. He began to tour April 5, 2013, as lead guitarist with Bob Dylan and his band. He was replaced under unknown circumstances in July 2013.
Awards
He has been nominated for and has received numerous awards over his career. Awards include:
2007 Rhode Island Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts
2001 "Best Blues Guitarist" W.C. Handy Award[2]
2000 "Best Blues Guitarist" W.C. Handy Award[2]
Robillard has also been nominated for:
2007 "Best Contemporary Blues Album" for "Guitar Groove-A-Rama" Grammy Award
2010 "Best Traditional Blues Album" for "Stomp! The Blues Tonight" Grammy Award
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lipeeFqNVrs
Big Pete Pearson is Arizona's King of the Blues. He has ruled the Phoenix blues bars since the late 1950's. His physical stature and overwhelmingly strong voice command attention. Off stage, Pete can be found with a snifter of Christian Brothers brandy in hand as he joyously greets his many fans. He is a father figure to many local bluesmen and blueswomen who have cut their teeth playing in his band. Though highly regarded locally, Big Pete's greatness is still one of Arizona's best kept secrets.
Today, you'll find Big Pete backed by four of the nation's finest young blues entertainers. Each is a master blues musician.
Born in Jamaica on October 4, 1936, Big Pete landed in Phoenix by way of Austin, Texas. He was raised by his grandparents in St. John's, a Baptist community just outside Austin. His grandfather was a minister and his grandmother ran a local mission. "I kinda got on my own at an early age and I was into music full force. I've always loved music," Pete says. His grandparents arranged for piano lessons. "I despised the piano, but I took lessons anyway because it was music and I didn't care." He eventually learned how to play guitar and bass. "My grandma was the one who taught me to use my voice," Pete says. She would sit me down and teach me how I should express my words. She told me, "When you hit a high note, you turn it loose...you bring it from here'"..he rubs his ample belly.
He was known as L.P. Pearson in Austin and played his first gig at age 9 at the Triple J, a local beer joint. His grandparents thought he was playing guitar and singing with a spiritual group at the church. Big Pete was a regular at the juke joints on the east side of Austin such as The Victory Grill, Charlie's Playhouse, Big Mary's Bar & Grille, Ernie's Chicken Shack and Sam's Showcase. "Playing in the jukes was dangerous, dangerous, man, real dangerous," says Pete. "But I played them anyway and those were my up days." Pete played the three string bass with the Jets, fronted by Blues Boy Hubbard, and frequently sat in with T.D. Bell and the Cadillacs.
Big Pete's cousin is the famous W.C Clark. Pete was a major influence to his now famous cousin W.C. Clark, who said in an interview: "I had a cousin -- I've got a cousin -- Big Pete Pearson. He was my biggest influence. He was already singing the blues, and playing the blues, and he got me into it. I followed in his footsteps. He's still going, and I am, too." W.C. adds, "Big Pete is a man that has a lot of little boy in him and is so full of jolly."
Big Pete first came to Phoenix in the late 1950's and settled in the mid 60's. The late Duke Draper gave Big Pete his first gig in the desert. Big Pete went on to join and record with Jimmy Knight and the Knights of Rhythm. These vintage sides though never issued should see the light of day on a Phoenix R&B anthology that is forthcoming on the German Bear Family label.
From the 1970's on, Big Pete fronted a number of bands with a variety of names~~Driving Wheel, The Detroit Blues Band and the Blues Sevilles. His bands not only maintained Pete's high blues stature but would be both a camp for experienced veterans and a training ground for up and comers. Band alumni include saxophonists Bernard Williams (of Dyke And The Blazers fame), Bob Tate, Fred Robinson and Emerson Carruthers, guitarist T.D. Bell, Lucius Parr, Scotty Spenner and Tommy Dukes, harmonicist Bob Corritore, keyboardist Dr. Fish and drummers Elmer Scott and Delmar Stewart, to name a few.
Big Pete has worked with blue legends Ray Charles, BB King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and others.
Big Pete has played with icons and blues legends such as Ray Charles, BB King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, W.C. Clark, Ike & Tina Turner, Koko Taylor, Etta James, Gatemouth Brown, Johnny Ace, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, Big Joe Turner, Pinetop Perkins, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Knight, Duke Robillard, Henry Gray and many many others... recorded with Gatemouth Brown „Okie Dokie Stomp“ and many others.
Inducted to the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame 1995. No.1 hit on Blues charts „I´m here baby“. Won Best Blues album of the Year 2007 at the Independent Music Awards.
Today, you'll find Big Pete backed by four of the nation's finest young blues entertainers. Each is a master blues musician.
Born in Jamaica on October 4, 1936, Big Pete landed in Phoenix by way of Austin, Texas. He was raised by his grandparents in St. John's, a Baptist community just outside Austin. His grandfather was a minister and his grandmother ran a local mission. "I kinda got on my own at an early age and I was into music full force. I've always loved music," Pete says. His grandparents arranged for piano lessons. "I despised the piano, but I took lessons anyway because it was music and I didn't care." He eventually learned how to play guitar and bass. "My grandma was the one who taught me to use my voice," Pete says. She would sit me down and teach me how I should express my words. She told me, "When you hit a high note, you turn it loose...you bring it from here'"..he rubs his ample belly.
He was known as L.P. Pearson in Austin and played his first gig at age 9 at the Triple J, a local beer joint. His grandparents thought he was playing guitar and singing with a spiritual group at the church. Big Pete was a regular at the juke joints on the east side of Austin such as The Victory Grill, Charlie's Playhouse, Big Mary's Bar & Grille, Ernie's Chicken Shack and Sam's Showcase. "Playing in the jukes was dangerous, dangerous, man, real dangerous," says Pete. "But I played them anyway and those were my up days." Pete played the three string bass with the Jets, fronted by Blues Boy Hubbard, and frequently sat in with T.D. Bell and the Cadillacs.
Big Pete's cousin is the famous W.C Clark. Pete was a major influence to his now famous cousin W.C. Clark, who said in an interview: "I had a cousin -- I've got a cousin -- Big Pete Pearson. He was my biggest influence. He was already singing the blues, and playing the blues, and he got me into it. I followed in his footsteps. He's still going, and I am, too." W.C. adds, "Big Pete is a man that has a lot of little boy in him and is so full of jolly."
Big Pete first came to Phoenix in the late 1950's and settled in the mid 60's. The late Duke Draper gave Big Pete his first gig in the desert. Big Pete went on to join and record with Jimmy Knight and the Knights of Rhythm. These vintage sides though never issued should see the light of day on a Phoenix R&B anthology that is forthcoming on the German Bear Family label.
From the 1970's on, Big Pete fronted a number of bands with a variety of names~~Driving Wheel, The Detroit Blues Band and the Blues Sevilles. His bands not only maintained Pete's high blues stature but would be both a camp for experienced veterans and a training ground for up and comers. Band alumni include saxophonists Bernard Williams (of Dyke And The Blazers fame), Bob Tate, Fred Robinson and Emerson Carruthers, guitarist T.D. Bell, Lucius Parr, Scotty Spenner and Tommy Dukes, harmonicist Bob Corritore, keyboardist Dr. Fish and drummers Elmer Scott and Delmar Stewart, to name a few.
Big Pete has worked with blue legends Ray Charles, BB King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and others.
Big Pete has played with icons and blues legends such as Ray Charles, BB King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, W.C. Clark, Ike & Tina Turner, Koko Taylor, Etta James, Gatemouth Brown, Johnny Ace, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, Big Joe Turner, Pinetop Perkins, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Knight, Duke Robillard, Henry Gray and many many others... recorded with Gatemouth Brown „Okie Dokie Stomp“ and many others.
Inducted to the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame 1995. No.1 hit on Blues charts „I´m here baby“. Won Best Blues album of the Year 2007 at the Independent Music Awards.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica on October 4, 1936, Big Pete Pearson landed in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1950’s by way of Austin, Texas. He was raised by his grandparents in St. John’s Baptist community just outside Austin. His grandfather was a minister and his grandmother was a missionary. Big Pete was only 9 years of age when he gave his first performance at a local bar. He was a regular at juke joints such as the Victory Grill, Charlie’s Playhouse, Big Mary’s Bar & Grille, Ernie’s Chicken Shack and Sam’s Showcase. “Playing in these juke joints was dangerous, real dangerous”, says Pete. “But I played them anyway and those were my growing up years.” Big Pete has not left the stage since and is a veteran performer/song writer of 66 years and has been on countless festival and club stages throughout the world.
In the 1950’s Pete came to Phoenix and has ruled the Phoenix blues scene ever since. His physical stature and overwhelmingly strong voice commands attention. He is a father figure to many bluesmen and women who have cut their teeth playing in his band. Though he is a local legend, being inducted in the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame in 1995, Big Pete’s greatness is known throughout the world and these days spends more time performing in Europe than in the United States. In the last couple of years Big Pete has become a European household name performing with his European band, The Gamblers. (You are invited to go to youtube.com and type in, “Big Pete Pearson and the Gamblers”. There you will see some of his many performances in France). While in the States he performs with his other band, The Big Pete Blues Band.
Over the years Big Pete has worked with legends such as Ray Charles, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Tina and Ike Turner, Big Joe Turner, Etta James, Aaron Neville and the Neville Brothers, Koko Taylor, Gate Mouth Brown, Johnny Ace, T.D. Bell, Big Mama Thornton, T-Bone Walker, Screamin’ J. Hawkins, Pinetop Perkins, Joey DeFrancesco, Buddy Guy, Janiva Magness, Erbbie Bowser, Blues Boy Hubbard, Candye Kane and an endless array of others.
Big Pete has created and written many albums but his most memorable CDs include, “One More Drink”, “I’m Here Baby” (which hit # 1 worldwide and won Best Blues Album of the Year at the Independent Music Awards in 2007) “Finger In Your Eye”, his 2009 release, “The Screamer”. Since the Screamer’s release it has hit #1 worldwide on the blues charts.
In April of 2012, Big Pete released his newest album entitled, "Choose", his first album recorded with celebrated Italian blues band, The Gamblers. Today, Big Pete can be seen, more often than not, performing live in Europe with the Gamblers.
In the 1950’s Pete came to Phoenix and has ruled the Phoenix blues scene ever since. His physical stature and overwhelmingly strong voice commands attention. He is a father figure to many bluesmen and women who have cut their teeth playing in his band. Though he is a local legend, being inducted in the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame in 1995, Big Pete’s greatness is known throughout the world and these days spends more time performing in Europe than in the United States. In the last couple of years Big Pete has become a European household name performing with his European band, The Gamblers. (You are invited to go to youtube.com and type in, “Big Pete Pearson and the Gamblers”. There you will see some of his many performances in France). While in the States he performs with his other band, The Big Pete Blues Band.
Over the years Big Pete has worked with legends such as Ray Charles, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Tina and Ike Turner, Big Joe Turner, Etta James, Aaron Neville and the Neville Brothers, Koko Taylor, Gate Mouth Brown, Johnny Ace, T.D. Bell, Big Mama Thornton, T-Bone Walker, Screamin’ J. Hawkins, Pinetop Perkins, Joey DeFrancesco, Buddy Guy, Janiva Magness, Erbbie Bowser, Blues Boy Hubbard, Candye Kane and an endless array of others.
Big Pete has created and written many albums but his most memorable CDs include, “One More Drink”, “I’m Here Baby” (which hit # 1 worldwide and won Best Blues Album of the Year at the Independent Music Awards in 2007) “Finger In Your Eye”, his 2009 release, “The Screamer”. Since the Screamer’s release it has hit #1 worldwide on the blues charts.
In April of 2012, Big Pete released his newest album entitled, "Choose", his first album recorded with celebrated Italian blues band, The Gamblers. Today, Big Pete can be seen, more often than not, performing live in Europe with the Gamblers.
Oscar Wilson *04.10.1953
THE CASHBOX KINGS
Chicago Blues
Joe Nosek – vocals, harmonica
Oscar Wilson – vocals
Joel Paterson – guitar
Fred Jouglas – double bass
Pascal Delmas – drums
Die Cash Box Kings stehen für den Nachkriegs-Blues aus Chicago, der in den 40/50er Jahren so sehr beeindruckte. Sie verbinden ihn mit dem Deltablues der 20/30er Jahre. Die Musik von Chess und Sun Records wird zum Leben erweckt, ein roher ungekünstelter Sound, der mitreißt und verzaubert.
Sie spielen garantiert nicht das gewohnte Chicagobluesrepertoire rauf und runter. Sie gelten als eine der größten Hoffnungen für ein Wiederewachen von Chicago als Bluesmetropole. Sänger Oscar Wilson steht im Sound und Outfit dem von Muddy Waters sehr nahe und sie sind alle echte Traditionalisten, die aber im Hier und Jetzt angekommen sind und mit ihren Shows überall Begeisterungsstürme auslösen. It´ s time für Ingolstadt!
Auszeichnungen
*The Cash Box Kings’ Black Toppin’ nominated for a Blues Music Award for ‘Best Traditional Blues Album’!!!
*Cash Box Kings‘ Black Toppin‘ named one of the ‚10 Best Blues Recordings of 2013‘ by Apple iTunes
*Black Toppin‘ wins 2013 Blues Blast Award for Best Traditional Blues Album!
An under-appreciated gem from the Southside of Chicago, Oscar "43 Street" Wilson is part Muddy Waters, part Cedric the Entertainer and a true crowd igniter. Standing over 6'3" tall and weighing over 300 pounds, this larger-than-life front man carries on in the tradition of the great Chicago bluesmen like the Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Rogers, and Muddy Waters.
Wilson was born in Chicago, Illinois on 43rd and Wells in the 1940's and has spent his life living and playing the blues in Chicago and Mississippi. Oscar grew up in a musical family; his father was a jazz, blues, and gospel musician and composer and performed with Nat King Cole. Oscar made his musical debut at age 11 singing at a house party with his neighbor, the legendary Dave "Honey Boy" Edwards. In his youth, Oscar immersed himself in the Chicago blues culture and taught himself guitar, piano, drums and harmonica. Throughout his adult life, Oscar frequented blues clubs in Chicago and Mississippi and performed with Chicago blues mainstays like Johnny B. Moore and Melvin Taylor.
The addition of Wilson to the Cash Box Kings lineup only intensifies the Kings' musical connection with the great postwar Chicago blues sounds of the 1940's and 50's. There are few other front men working today that can work a crowd quite like Wilson. His huge physical presence, his incredibly powerful and expressive voice, and his authentic, colorful, humorous, and dynamic stage performances are guaranteed to whip any audience into a frenzy. "Playing with the Kings has been the thrill of a lifetime for me! I'm really grateful to be making music with such accomplished young musicians," says Wilson.
Chicago Blues
Joe Nosek – vocals, harmonica
Oscar Wilson – vocals
Joel Paterson – guitar
Fred Jouglas – double bass
Pascal Delmas – drums
Die Cash Box Kings stehen für den Nachkriegs-Blues aus Chicago, der in den 40/50er Jahren so sehr beeindruckte. Sie verbinden ihn mit dem Deltablues der 20/30er Jahre. Die Musik von Chess und Sun Records wird zum Leben erweckt, ein roher ungekünstelter Sound, der mitreißt und verzaubert.
Sie spielen garantiert nicht das gewohnte Chicagobluesrepertoire rauf und runter. Sie gelten als eine der größten Hoffnungen für ein Wiederewachen von Chicago als Bluesmetropole. Sänger Oscar Wilson steht im Sound und Outfit dem von Muddy Waters sehr nahe und sie sind alle echte Traditionalisten, die aber im Hier und Jetzt angekommen sind und mit ihren Shows überall Begeisterungsstürme auslösen. It´ s time für Ingolstadt!
Auszeichnungen
*The Cash Box Kings’ Black Toppin’ nominated for a Blues Music Award for ‘Best Traditional Blues Album’!!!
*Cash Box Kings‘ Black Toppin‘ named one of the ‚10 Best Blues Recordings of 2013‘ by Apple iTunes
*Black Toppin‘ wins 2013 Blues Blast Award for Best Traditional Blues Album!
An under-appreciated gem from the Southside of Chicago, Oscar "43 Street" Wilson is part Muddy Waters, part Cedric the Entertainer and a true crowd igniter. Standing over 6'3" tall and weighing over 300 pounds, this larger-than-life front man carries on in the tradition of the great Chicago bluesmen like the Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Rogers, and Muddy Waters.
Wilson was born in Chicago, Illinois on 43rd and Wells in the 1940's and has spent his life living and playing the blues in Chicago and Mississippi. Oscar grew up in a musical family; his father was a jazz, blues, and gospel musician and composer and performed with Nat King Cole. Oscar made his musical debut at age 11 singing at a house party with his neighbor, the legendary Dave "Honey Boy" Edwards. In his youth, Oscar immersed himself in the Chicago blues culture and taught himself guitar, piano, drums and harmonica. Throughout his adult life, Oscar frequented blues clubs in Chicago and Mississippi and performed with Chicago blues mainstays like Johnny B. Moore and Melvin Taylor.
The addition of Wilson to the Cash Box Kings lineup only intensifies the Kings' musical connection with the great postwar Chicago blues sounds of the 1940's and 50's. There are few other front men working today that can work a crowd quite like Wilson. His huge physical presence, his incredibly powerful and expressive voice, and his authentic, colorful, humorous, and dynamic stage performances are guaranteed to whip any audience into a frenzy. "Playing with the Kings has been the thrill of a lifetime for me! I'm really grateful to be making music with such accomplished young musicians," says Wilson.
The Cash Box Kings - Black Toppin
Crazy About You Baby - Oscar Wilson & Little Frank at Leroy's
Nickolas Galiouris *04.10.1977
Got involved with music at 10, by picking up guitar lessons at home... Around 12 years came the first "fight" with his teacher, mr Kostas Skoultsos. Nickolas wanted to play songs and his teacher insisted on classical education. So, one afternoon, the teacher came, and after young Nickolas served the coffee, told him: "Sir, I made my mind up. I will be playing songs, and you can carry on with classical education". Nickolas quit lessons.
Started writing his first songs at 13. He recalls listening to his father's cassettes with 70's hits. Among his early listenings, there was a collection full of rock&roll, with all the stars of the 50's -Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. At 14 Nickolas hears to the Robert Johnson's recordings. He was spooked. Of course, later on he heard a lot more and even harder blues-driven versions of the genre, by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and SRV...
Nickolas started playing with various bands when 17, taking part in festivals and playing small bars & clubs. He even managed to record a little something, always underground. He goes to the UK for studies, gets involved in some projects with locals, jamming occasionally. Back in Greece to do army service, with a harmonica, then a sgt. major gives him permit and plays some bar in Lemnos, then back to the camp to play for fellow soldiers. After his service, Nickolas did relevant and irrelevant jobs. Starts playing bars, back in his home-town, recording his own songs in his minimal home-studio. Once again, he gets involved with various bands and plays small bars, clubs, big and small festivals, recordings again, he even manages as a two-people act to perform in Athens.
But something was very wrong... Or so it seemed...
In 2010, for the first time, Nickolas thought of becoming a one-man-situation... Got back to his acoustic guitars, and started gathering some blues-like material. In 2013, he started building some hand-made music instruments, inspired by the African tradition. and by 2015, once again, he enters his home-studio to record "Cross-Eyed", his first solo album as Nickolas G.
Started writing his first songs at 13. He recalls listening to his father's cassettes with 70's hits. Among his early listenings, there was a collection full of rock&roll, with all the stars of the 50's -Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. At 14 Nickolas hears to the Robert Johnson's recordings. He was spooked. Of course, later on he heard a lot more and even harder blues-driven versions of the genre, by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and SRV...
Nickolas started playing with various bands when 17, taking part in festivals and playing small bars & clubs. He even managed to record a little something, always underground. He goes to the UK for studies, gets involved in some projects with locals, jamming occasionally. Back in Greece to do army service, with a harmonica, then a sgt. major gives him permit and plays some bar in Lemnos, then back to the camp to play for fellow soldiers. After his service, Nickolas did relevant and irrelevant jobs. Starts playing bars, back in his home-town, recording his own songs in his minimal home-studio. Once again, he gets involved with various bands and plays small bars, clubs, big and small festivals, recordings again, he even manages as a two-people act to perform in Athens.
But something was very wrong... Or so it seemed...
In 2010, for the first time, Nickolas thought of becoming a one-man-situation... Got back to his acoustic guitars, and started gathering some blues-like material. In 2013, he started building some hand-made music instruments, inspired by the African tradition. and by 2015, once again, he enters his home-studio to record "Cross-Eyed", his first solo album as Nickolas G.
http://nickolasg.wixsite.com/nickolasg/bio
http://nickolasg.wixsite.com/nickolasg/music
Nickolas G. - Cross-Eyed, live @ 4th Los Almiros Festival
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mxhSN4UAzY
Nickolas G. - "Cross - Eyed", Full-Album, 2015
Tracklist
1. Lost Control 00:00
2. Hell's Pit Blues 3:20
3. Crippled 6:06
4. Tell Us All You Know 8:27
5. Cross - Eyed 10:42
6. The Chugger Blues 14:58
7. Bad Back Blues 17:39
8. My Prison Blues 20:24
9. The Trigger Song 24:20
10. My Baby 26:15
11. Flask in The Coat 29:47
12. The Investment Blues 34:10
13. Diddley Bow 38:21
14. Shitty Blues 41:38
15. Mountain Blues 43:55
All songs written and performed by Nickolas G.
1. Lost Control 00:00
2. Hell's Pit Blues 3:20
3. Crippled 6:06
4. Tell Us All You Know 8:27
5. Cross - Eyed 10:42
6. The Chugger Blues 14:58
7. Bad Back Blues 17:39
8. My Prison Blues 20:24
9. The Trigger Song 24:20
10. My Baby 26:15
11. Flask in The Coat 29:47
12. The Investment Blues 34:10
13. Diddley Bow 38:21
14. Shitty Blues 41:38
15. Mountain Blues 43:55
All songs written and performed by Nickolas G.
Slinky Williams *04.10.1957
Mandolin
Acoustic Guitar
Percussion
Vocals
Als Sängerin schätzt sie die "laid-back" Phrasierung Billie Holidays und die gewaltige Stimme von Bessie Smith, immer bereit für ein Vokalarrangement mit den Boys, inspiriert durch die Mills Brothers oder einen Beatles -Klassiker.
Sie spielt eine flotte Mandoline „como“ Ry Cooder, beeinflusst von American Folkmusic, Blues, Bluegrass und Swingjazz.
Slinky’s Devise:
„´tain’t nobody’s biz-ness if I do”.
Die Bandgeschichte
1978
"New Orleans, wo sonst? Slinky Williams, P’tit Loup und Chief Walter Dee sind auf ihrem Trip durch die South Louisiana Juke Joints und Red Light Bars. Auf ihrer Musik-Odyssee tauchen sie ein in diese sagenumwobene Mischung aus Blues, Jazz, Country, Funk und Soul. Man begegnet dem damals dort lebenden Catfish Harry.
Ein paar Jam Sessions später und die Sache ist klar: die X-perts sind komplett.
1979
Catfish Harry organisiert eine Tour durch South Louisiana. Das Publikum ist begeistert, Konzerte werden mitgeschnitten ..... Filmriss.
2000
Back in good old Germany findet Catfish Harry seine ehemaligen Mitmusiker wieder.
Mit ihm tauchen auch die alten Aufnahmen wieder auf und versetzen die vier Musiker beim ersten Abhören in wahre Verzückung. Dieser Groove, dieses Feeling “makes you dance and shake your butt until your butt is funky”. Man entschließt sich, die Aufnahmen unter dem Titel
“The Long Lost American Tapes”
auf CD zu veröffentlichen. Seitdem sind die X-perts auf einer never ending Welttournee, um dieses Album zu promoten. Von Brockum bis Lommersum, Kerpen-Buir bis Huchem-Stammeln hinterlassen ihre Auftritte jedes Mal vor Begeisterung tobende Fans. Dabei sind die X-perts, was die Locations angeht, wählerisch geworden. Ohne Whisky, Rotwein, ´was zu Rauchen und ein paar "Foxy Ladies" und "Sharp Dressed Men" im Publikum treten sie nicht auf.
"Absolutiv“ zu schön um wahr zu sein, oder? Fortsetzung folgt...
Acoustic Guitar
Percussion
Vocals
Als Sängerin schätzt sie die "laid-back" Phrasierung Billie Holidays und die gewaltige Stimme von Bessie Smith, immer bereit für ein Vokalarrangement mit den Boys, inspiriert durch die Mills Brothers oder einen Beatles -Klassiker.
Sie spielt eine flotte Mandoline „como“ Ry Cooder, beeinflusst von American Folkmusic, Blues, Bluegrass und Swingjazz.
Slinky’s Devise:
„´tain’t nobody’s biz-ness if I do”.
Die Bandgeschichte
1978
"New Orleans, wo sonst? Slinky Williams, P’tit Loup und Chief Walter Dee sind auf ihrem Trip durch die South Louisiana Juke Joints und Red Light Bars. Auf ihrer Musik-Odyssee tauchen sie ein in diese sagenumwobene Mischung aus Blues, Jazz, Country, Funk und Soul. Man begegnet dem damals dort lebenden Catfish Harry.
Ein paar Jam Sessions später und die Sache ist klar: die X-perts sind komplett.
1979
Catfish Harry organisiert eine Tour durch South Louisiana. Das Publikum ist begeistert, Konzerte werden mitgeschnitten ..... Filmriss.
2000
Back in good old Germany findet Catfish Harry seine ehemaligen Mitmusiker wieder.
Mit ihm tauchen auch die alten Aufnahmen wieder auf und versetzen die vier Musiker beim ersten Abhören in wahre Verzückung. Dieser Groove, dieses Feeling “makes you dance and shake your butt until your butt is funky”. Man entschließt sich, die Aufnahmen unter dem Titel
“The Long Lost American Tapes”
auf CD zu veröffentlichen. Seitdem sind die X-perts auf einer never ending Welttournee, um dieses Album zu promoten. Von Brockum bis Lommersum, Kerpen-Buir bis Huchem-Stammeln hinterlassen ihre Auftritte jedes Mal vor Begeisterung tobende Fans. Dabei sind die X-perts, was die Locations angeht, wählerisch geworden. Ohne Whisky, Rotwein, ´was zu Rauchen und ein paar "Foxy Ladies" und "Sharp Dressed Men" im Publikum treten sie nicht auf.
"Absolutiv“ zu schön um wahr zu sein, oder? Fortsetzung folgt...
mandolin
acoustic guitar
percussion
vocals
As a singer she adores the laid-back phrasing of Billie Holiday and the big voice of Bessie Smith, always ready for a vocal harmony with the boys inspired by the Mills Brothers or a Beatles classic.
Plays a mean mandolin “como” Ry Cooder, related to American folkmusic, blues, bluegrass and swingjazz.
Slinky’s device:
„Tain’t nobody’s biz-ness if I do”.
X-perts/ the band history
1978
New Orleans, where else? Slinky Williams, P’tit Loup and Chief Walter Dee are on a trip, checking out the Louisiana juke joints and red light bars. During their musical odyssey they dive deep into this mythical mixture of blues, jazz, country, funk and soul. They meet Catfish Harry, who used to live there, a couple of jam sessions later it’s obvious : the X-perts line up is perfect.
1979
Catfish Harry arranges a tour of Southern Louisiana, the audiences are enthusiastic,
concerts recorded…….cut.
2000
Back in good old Germany, Catfish Harry happens to meet his former band members again, the old tapes re-appear and listening to them all four musicians cannot believe their ears. Such a groove, such a feeling “ makes you dance and shake your butt until your butt is funky”. They decide to release the recordings on CD as
“The Long Lost American Tapes”.
The X-perts are now on a never ending world tour, to promote this album. From Brokum to Lommersum, Kerpen-Buir to Huchem-Stammeln – wherever they play they leave their fans in a roaring frenzy. The X-perts select the location carefully: No venue without some whisky, red wine, a good smoke, and some foxy ladies and sharp dressed men around!
“Desitively” too good to be true, ain’t it?
To be continued……
acoustic guitar
percussion
vocals
As a singer she adores the laid-back phrasing of Billie Holiday and the big voice of Bessie Smith, always ready for a vocal harmony with the boys inspired by the Mills Brothers or a Beatles classic.
Plays a mean mandolin “como” Ry Cooder, related to American folkmusic, blues, bluegrass and swingjazz.
Slinky’s device:
„Tain’t nobody’s biz-ness if I do”.
X-perts/ the band history
1978
New Orleans, where else? Slinky Williams, P’tit Loup and Chief Walter Dee are on a trip, checking out the Louisiana juke joints and red light bars. During their musical odyssey they dive deep into this mythical mixture of blues, jazz, country, funk and soul. They meet Catfish Harry, who used to live there, a couple of jam sessions later it’s obvious : the X-perts line up is perfect.
1979
Catfish Harry arranges a tour of Southern Louisiana, the audiences are enthusiastic,
concerts recorded…….cut.
2000
Back in good old Germany, Catfish Harry happens to meet his former band members again, the old tapes re-appear and listening to them all four musicians cannot believe their ears. Such a groove, such a feeling “ makes you dance and shake your butt until your butt is funky”. They decide to release the recordings on CD as
“The Long Lost American Tapes”.
The X-perts are now on a never ending world tour, to promote this album. From Brokum to Lommersum, Kerpen-Buir to Huchem-Stammeln – wherever they play they leave their fans in a roaring frenzy. The X-perts select the location carefully: No venue without some whisky, red wine, a good smoke, and some foxy ladies and sharp dressed men around!
“Desitively” too good to be true, ain’t it?
To be continued……
Slinky & P'tit Loup "doucement"
Slinky & P'tit Loup: Video old tv dmsm
R.I.P.
Danny Gatton +04.10.1994
Danny Gatton (* 4. September 1945 in Washington, D.C.; † 4. Oktober 1994 in Newburg (Maryland)) war ein US-amerikanischer Gitarrist.
Er spielte in einem weiten Stilbereich von Rock über Jazz, Blues bis Rockabilly. Gatton wurde von der Zeitschrift Rolling Stone auf den 63. Platz der „100 Größten Gitarristen aller Zeiten“ gewählt.
Danny Gatton begann als Teenager Gitarre zu spielen. Schon sein Vater Daniel W. Gatton arbeitete als Rhythmusgitarrist, gab aber das Musikerleben zugunsten seiner Familie auf.
In den 1970ern erlangte Danny Gatton als Gitarrist und Banjo-Spieler in der Gruppe „Liz Meyer & Friends“ erste Bekanntheit. In den späten 1970ern und 1980ern trat er sowohl als Solist auf als auch mit der Gruppe „Redneck Jazz Explosion“.
Der Titelsong seines Albums 88 Elmira Street war für den Grammy Award in der Kategorie „Best Rock Instrumental Performance“ nominiert, wurde aber dann von Eric Johnson mit „Cliffs of Dover“ geschlagen.
Gatton spielte überwiegend Telecaster Gitarren. Seine Fähigkeiten an der Gitarre wurden von Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle und seinem Kindheitsidol Les Paul gelobt. Gatton spielte auch mit Albert Lee und Jimmie Vaughan.
Am 4. Oktober 1994 schloss sich Gatton in seiner Garage in Newburg (Maryland) ein und erschoss sich.
Im Januar 1995 wurde im „Tramps club“ in New York City für drei Abende ein Tribut-Konzert organisiert.
Danny Gatton (September 4, 1945 – October 4, 1994) was an American guitarist who fused rockabilly, jazz, and country to create his own distinctive style. When Rolling Stone magazine selected the 100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time in 2003, senior editor David Fricke ranked Gatton 63rd on his ballot.[1] On May 26, 2010, Gibson.com ranked Gatton as the 27th best guitarist of all time.[2]
Early life
Gatton was born in Washington, D.C. on September 4, 1945. His father, Daniel W. Gatton Sr., was a rhythm guitarist known for his unique percussive style, who left his musical career to raise his family in a more stable profession. The younger Gatton grew up to share his father's passion for the instrument.
Career
Danny Gatton began his career playing in bands while still a teenager. He began to attract wider interest in the 1970s while playing guitar and banjo for the group Liz Meyer & Friends. He made his name as a performer in the Washington, DC, area during the late 1970s and 1980s, both as a solo performer and with his Redneck Jazz Explosion, in which he traded licks with virtuoso pedal steel player Buddy Emmons over a tight bass-drums rhythm that drew from blues, country, bebop, and rockabilly influences. He also backed Robert Gordon and Roger Miller. He contributed a cover of Apricot Brandy, a song by Elektra Records-supergroup Rhinoceros, to the 1990 compilation album Rubáiyát.
Playing style
Gatton's playing combined musical styles such as jazz, blues and rockabilly in an innovative fashion, and he was known by some as the Telemaster. He was also called the world's greatest unknown guitarist, and The Humbler, from his ability to out-play anyone willing to go up against him in "head-cutting" jam sessions.[citation needed] Amos Garrett, guitar player for Maria Muldaur, gave Gatton the nickname. A photo published in the October 2007 issue of Guitar Player magazine shows Gatton playing in front of a neon sign that says "Victims Wanted."
However, he never achieved the commercial success that his talent arguably deserved. His album 88 Elmira Street was up for a 1990 Grammy Award for the song Elmira Street Boogie in the category Best Rock Instrumental Performance, but the award went to Eric Johnson for Cliffs of Dover.
His skills were most appreciated by his peers such as Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle, and his childhood idol Les Paul. During his career, Gatton appeared on stage with guitar heroes such as Alvin Lee and Jimmie Vaughan. Gatton had roomed with Roy Buchanan in Nashville, Tennessee in the mid '60s and they became frequent jamming partners, according to Guitar Player magazine's October 2007 issue. He also performed with old teenage friend Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen (from Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna) as Jack and the Degenerates. Those recordings were never released, but live tapes are in circulation. In 1993, rocker Chris Isaak invited Gatton to record tracks for Isaak's San Francisco Days CD. Reports of where Gatton's playing can be heard on the CD vary, with unconfirmed reports placing him on either Can't Do a Thing (To Stop Me), 5:15 or Beautiful Houses.[citation needed]
He usually played a 1953 Fender Telecaster with Joe Barden pickups and Fender Super 250Ls, or Nickel Plated Steel (.010 to .046 with a .015 for the G) strings. (Fender now makes a replica of his heavily customized instrument.) For a slide, Gatton sometimes used a beer bottle or mug. In the March 1989 issue of Guitar Player magazine, he said he preferred to use an Alka-Seltzer bottle or long 6L6 vacuum tube as a slide, but that audiences liked the beer bottle. He did, however, only play slide overhand, citing his earlier training in steel guitar [Guitar Player, March 1989]. Among amplifiers Gatton is known to have used are a 1959 Fender Bassman amp and a heavily customized blackface Fender Vibrolux Reverb]].
After using Fender picks, he switched to a jazz-style teardrop pick after Buchanan had recommended them to him. He was capable of intricate passages combining Bluegrass, bebop, and garage sounds, executed with amazing clarity and at dizzying speeds. His picking technique was a hybrid combination of pick and fingers, primarily his middle and ring fingers on his right hand. The basis of his picking technique was using banjo rolls; he was an accomplished banjo player and from that he learned the traditional (Scruggs style) right-hand technique. His forward roll consisted of a pick downstroke, then middle finger, then ring finger. His backward roll consisted of middle finger, then a pick upstroke, then a pick downstroke. He possessed a classical guitar left hand technique, thumb behind the neck, fretting with arched fingers.
Among his admirers are Les Paul, James Burton, Lenny Breau, Joe Bonamassa (whom Danny mentored when Joe was eleven years old), Vince Gill, Evan Johns (of Evan Johns and His H-Bombs), Chris Cheney, Bill Kirchen, Albert Lee, Steve Vai, Buckethead, Arlen Roth, Johnny Hiland, Ricky Skaggs, Slash, and Richie Sambora.[3]
Final years, death and legacy
Throughout the late 1980s and early 90s, Danny worked closely with Fender to create his very own signature model guitar – The Danny Gatton Signature Telecaster, released in 1990.[4] On October 4, 1994, Gatton locked himself in his garage in Newburg, Maryland and shot himself. He left behind no explanation.[3] Members of his family and close friends believe Danny had silently suffered from depression for many years.[5]
On January 10, 11 and 12, 1995, Tramps club in New York organized a three-night tribute to Danny Gatton featuring dozens of Gatton's musical admirers, the highlight of which was a twenty-minute performance by Les Paul, James Burton, Arlen Roth and Albert Lee.[6] Those shows (with all musicians performing for free) raised $25,000 for Gatton's wife and daughter.
Danny Gatton has been described as possessing an extraordinary proficiency on his instrument, "a living treasury of American musical styles."[7] In 2009, John Previti, who played bass guitar with Danny for 18 years stated: "You know, when he played country music, it sounded like all he played was country music. When he played jazz, it sounded like that's all he played, rockabilly, old rock and roll, soul music. You know, he called himself a Whitman sampler of music"[5] Legendary guitarist Steve Vai reckons Danny "comes closer than anyone else to being the best guitar player that ever lived."[8] Accomplished guitar veteran Albert Lee said of Gatton: "Here’s a guy who’s got it all.”[9]
Since the advent of YouTube, decades-old bootleg performances of Danny have garnered millions of views,[10] eliciting high praise from fans worldwide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfBF4rr7FiA
Janis Joplin +04.10.1970
Janis Lyn Joplin (* 19. Januar 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas; † 4. Oktober 1970 in Los Angeles) war eineUS-amerikanische Rock-Sängerin.
Leben
Joplin wurde als Tochter von Seth Ward Joplin, einem Mitarbeiter der Ölgesellschaft Texaco, und Dorothy Joplin (geb. East), die ihrerseits eine Gesangsausbildung abgebrochen hatte und als Büroangestellte arbeitete, geboren und hatte zwei jüngere Geschwister, Michael und Laura.
In ihrer Kindheit wandte sie sich der Kunst (besonders Gedichten) zu und las viel. Obwohl sie im Kirchenchor sang, dachte niemand an eine spätere Karriere als Musikerin. Ihre Mutter Dorothy setzte auf das Talent ihrer älteren Tochter im Zeichnen und sorgte dafür, dass sie privaten Kunstunterricht bekam. Nach ausgiebiger Lektüre des Time Magazine begann Janis Joplin, Blues- und Folk-Musik für sich zu entdecken. Ihren ersten öffentlichen Auftritt hatte sie 1958 im Halfway House.
Nachdem sie 1960 ihren Highschool-Abschluss bestanden hatte, ging sie im Alter von 17 Jahren von zu Hause fort, um Sängerin zu werden. Sie versuchte sich an einigen Colleges, brach aber das Studium immer vorzeitig ab. Ein Jahr später hatte sie ein wenig Geld verdient und zog nach Los Angeles.
Janis Joplin sang, unter anderem begleitet von Jorma Kaukonen (Gitarrist von Jefferson Airplane), mit 18 Jahren in Kneipen und Folk-Clubs. Autodidaktisch geschult durch Schallplatten von Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter), Odetta Holmes und Bessie Smith, ihrem größten Vorbild, avancierte sie mit ihrem hemmungslosen, bis dahin für eine weiße Sängerin einzigartigen Gesangsstil zur „Queen des (weißen) Bluesrock“.
Nachdem Janis Joplin 1962 in Louisiana als Kellnerin gearbeitet hatte, kehrte sie bald nach Texas zurück, um in Austin ihr Appartement, das später als The Ghetto bekannt wurde, zu beziehen. Am College in Austin fiel sie wegen ihrer Kleidung als Außenseiterin auf.[1]
1965 trat sie mit der Jazzband von Dick Oxtot auf. 1966 rief Chet Helms, der Manager von Big Brother and the Holding Company, bei ihr an und teilte ihr mit, dass die Band eine Sängerin suche.
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Im Jahre 1966 begann Joplins Karriere, als sie nach San Francisco zog und sich besagter Band anschloss, mit der sie 1967 erfolgreich beim Monterey Pop Festival auftrat, dadurch einen Plattenvertrag bei Mainstream von Bob Shad erhielt und dort Big Brother & the Holding Company Featuring Janis Joplin herausbrachte.
1968 folgte für Columbia Records Cheap Thrills (Frontcover von Robert Crumb). Das zweite Album enthielt schon viele ihrer legendär gewordenen Stücke wie die Coverversion von Erma Franklins Piece of My Heart oder Ball and Chain. Nach den Studioaufnahmen reiste Janis Joplin nach Nepal, wo sie sich im Herbst 1968 für eine Weile in Kathmandu (Liedzeile in Cry Baby: „… Honey, the road'll even end in Kathmandu“) aufhielt.
Kozmic Blues Band
Ende 1968 trennte sich Joplin von der Band und stellte zusammen mit ihrer Plattenfirma eine größere Band zusammen, die lange keinen Namen trug, aber nach dem folgenden, dritten Joplin-Album Kozmic Blues Band genannt wurde. Der Grund dafür war der Ehrgeiz von Janis Joplin, mit einer professionellen Band mit Funk- und Blues-Instrumenten neue Musikrichtungen zu erschließen und nicht zuletzt professioneller zu arbeiten. Dies wurde unter anderem von der Musikzeitschrift Rolling Stone als Verrat an den Idealen der Rockmusik empfunden. Tatsächlich lief die Zusammenarbeit mit der Band nicht sehr gut, da sich die Musiker vorher nicht kannten und Janis Joplin wenig Erfahrung sowohl als Band-Leader als auch mit dem Arrangieren von Liedern hatte.
Die Band hatte ihren bekanntesten Auftritt im Jahre 1969 beim Woodstock-Festival. Janis Joplin war bei diesem Auftritt jedoch stark alkoholisiert, wirkte aufgeschwemmt, verbraucht und ihre Stimme brach oft. Ihre Plattenfirma verweigerte aus diesem Grund anfänglich die Erlaubnis, diesen Auftritt filmisch in der Dokumentation Woodstock zu zeigen. Allerdings machte sie eine Bemerkung über die Hippiebewegung, die später oft zitiert wurde: „Früher waren wir nur wenige, jetzt gibt es Massen und Massen und Massen von uns.“
Die Aufnahmen des Woodstockauftrittes wurden teilweise erst auf Box of Pearls (1999 bei Sony) bzw. vorher größtenteils 1993 auf einer posthumen CD (siehe Diskografie) durch die Firma ITM veröffentlicht.
1969 trat Janis Joplin im Fernsehen bei Ed Sullivan und Dick Cavett auf. Die Interviews mit Dick Cavett sind auf dem posthum veröffentlichten Album „Janis“ verewigt. Ebenfalls 1969 begab sich die Kozmic Blues Band auf eine zweimonatige Europa-Tournee. Ihr einziges Konzert in Deutschland fand am 12. April 1969 in der Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt-Unterliederbach statt. Auf der offiziellen Homepage ist unter dem Datum 12. April 1969 vermerkt: „Kozmic Blues: two concerts in Frankfurt“.[2] Nach Ende des von der Agentur Lippmann & Rau veranstalteten Konzerts forderte Joplin die Zuhörer auf, zu bleiben, weil nun noch eine Aufzeichnung des amerikanischen Fernsehens folgte. Mitschnitte dieses „zweiten Konzerts“, bei dem sie die Fans animierte, auf die Bühne zu kommen, sind in der Filmdokumentation Janis (1975) zu sehen. Der Titel „Raise Your Hand“ auf der posthum veröffentlichten LP Farewell Song wurde während des Frankfurter Konzerts live aufgenommen.
Zusätzlich nahm Joplin 1969 ihre zweite LP für Columbia (I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again, Mama) auf und wurde in Tampa, Florida inhaftiert, da sie einen Polizisten beleidigt hatte. Bei der nachfolgenden Gerichtsverhandlung bezeichnete ein Gericht Joplins Verhalten als freie Meinungsäußerung und ließ die Anklage fallen. Sie wurde aber nach ihrem Konzert in der Curtis Hall wegen obszöner Sprache und Fluchens auf der Bühne zu einer Geldstrafe verurteilt.
Im Januar 1970 löste sich die Band auf. Um von ihrer Sucht nach Alkohol, Heroin, Aufputschmitteln und anderen Drogen loszukommen, plante Joplin einen Urlaub in Südamerika und reiste zum Karneval nach Rio de Janeiro.
Full Tilt Boogie Band und Joplins Tod
Zurück in Kalifornien nahm Joplin ihren unsteten Lebenswandel wieder auf. Im April 1970 wurde ihre dritte Band, Full Tilt Boogie zusammengestellt. Diese stellte sich für sie als Glücksgriff heraus. Emotional und musikalisch harmonierte dieses Team. Road-Manager John Cooke: „Die Jungs suchten eine Band, die eine Heimat war. Sie wussten, dass Janis der Boss war und sie mochten sich alle auf Anhieb.“ Janis Joplin schien endgültig ihren Musikstil gefunden zu haben. Die Lieder mit der Full Tilt Boogie Band sollten ihre erfolgreichsten werden. Im Sommer 1970 trat sie im Festival Express Train auf.
Im September 1970 traf sich die Band in den Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles für die Aufnahmen zu ihrer dritten Columbia-LP, Pearl. Am 3. Oktober, kurz vor dem Ende der Studioaufnahmen, war Janis Joplin das letzte Mal im Sunset Sound Studio, um Bänder mit Titeln anzuhören, die sie an den folgenden Tagen einsingen sollte. Als sie am nächsten Tag bis nachmittags nicht wie vereinbart im Studio auftauchte, fuhr John Cooke zum Landmark Motel, in dem Janis Joplin seit dem 24. August wohnte, um nach ihr zu sehen. Er sah ihren psychedelisch lackierten Porsche auf dem Parkplatz stehen und ging daraufhin auf ihr Zimmer. Hier fand Cooke sie tot auf dem Fußboden liegend. Nach offiziellen Angaben starb Janis Joplin am 4. Oktober 1970 an einer Überdosis Heroin. Bei dem Titel Buried Alive in the Blues auf dem Album Pearl fehlt die Vokal-Spur, die Janis Joplin am 5. Oktober 1970 einsingen sollte.
Hinterlassenschaft
Kurz vor ihrem Tod hatte sie am 1. Oktober 1970 in Beverly Hills ihr Testament unterzeichnet. Wunschgemäß vertranken 200 Freunde auf einer Party das hinterlassene Bargeld von 1500 Dollar. Der Verbleib ihres sonstigen Vermögens war klar geregelt, wobei im Wesentlichen Eltern und Geschwister bedacht wurden. Insbesondere für die Auszahlungen an Janis' jüngeren Bruder Michael, dem eine gute Ausbildung ermöglicht werden sollte, hatte Anwalt Bob Gordon strenge Anweisungen.
Joplins Leiche wurde verbrannt und die Asche an der kalifornischen Küste (über der Bucht von Marin County) in den Pazifik bestattet.
Das Landmark Motel wurde unmittelbar nach Janis Joplins Tod in Highland Gardens Hotel umbenannt.
Bedeutung
Neben Jimi Hendrix und Jim Morrison war Janis Joplin eine der zentralen Symbolfiguren der Hippiezeit und der Hippiekultur. Alle drei prägten einen Lebensstil, der im Nachhinein durch „Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll“ und „Live fast, love hard, die young“ gekennzeichnet wurde. Aufgrund ihres frühen Todes wird sie wie andere einflussreiche Musiker, darunter Hendrix und Morrison, zum Klub 27 gezählt.
Die vergebliche Suche nach der wahren Liebe, Zuneigung und Geborgenheit ließ sie zuweilen in depressive Phasen fallen, welche sie durch Heroin, Kokain und Alkohol zu verdrängen versuchte. Durch diese innere Zerrissenheit der Gefühle und ihre Schwierigkeiten, enge menschliche Kontakte aufzubauen, lässt sich ihre Musik verstehen, die gleichzeitig Stolz und Verzweiflung (All is loneliness) ausdrückt.
Trivia
Janis Joplin besuchte im Sommer 1970, kurz vor ihrem Tod, das Grab von Bessie Smith (1894–1937) auf dem Mount Lawn Cemetery in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania. Als sie dabei angeblich feststellte, dass die von ihr verehrte Bluessängerin anonym beigesetzt worden war, ließ Janis ihr einen Grabstein setzen, der die Inschrift trägt: „The Greatest Blues Singer In The World Will Never Stop Singing – Bessie Smith – 1894–1937“[3] („Die größte Blues-Sängerin der Welt wird niemals aufhören zu singen“). Nach anderen Quellen bezahlte eine Krankenschwester aus Philadelphia eine Hälfte des Grabsteins, und Janis Joplin trug, nachdem man sie telefonisch darum gebeten hatte, die andere Hälfte der Kosten.[4]
Auf sehr vielen Fotos sieht man Janis Joplin mit einer Flasche Southern Comfort. Janis Joplin fragte bei der Herstellerfirma an, ob sie dafür nicht ein wenig Geld bekommen könnte, da dies eine gute Werbung sei. Der Schnapsproduzent willigte ein und überwies ihr 6000 Dollar.
In San Francisco hatte Janis Joplin eine Beziehung mit Country Joe McDonald, der ihr später das Lied Janis widmete.[5] Leonard Cohen schrieb über sie das Lied Chelsea Hotel No. 2.
Posthume Auszeichnung
Im Jahr 1995 wurde Janis Joplin in die Rock and Roll Hall of Fame aufgenommen.[6]
Am 4. November 2013 wurde auf dem Walk of Fame in Hollywood der 2510. Stern enthüllt, er trägt Joplins Namen. Bei der Zeremonie waren neben Angehörigen und Fans auch ihr Entdecker Clive Davis sowie Kris Kristofferson, der noch einmal „Me and Bobby McGee“ sang, anwesend.[7]
Janis Lyn Joplin (/ˈdʒɑːplɪn/; January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame 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 own backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band. Her first ever large scale public performance was at the Monterey Pop Festival; this led her to becoming very popular and one of the major attractions at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Joplin charted five singles; other popular songs include: "Down on Me"; "Summertime"; "Piece of My Heart"; "Ball 'n' Chain"; "Maybe"; "To Love Somebody"; "Kozmic Blues"; "Work Me, Lord"; "Cry Baby"; "Mercedes Benz"; and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee".
Joplin was well known for her performing abilities. Her fans referred to her stage presence as "electric"; at the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul". Known as "Pearl" among her friends, she was also a painter, dancer and music arranger. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004,[1] and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
Early life: 1943–1961
Joplin as a senior in high school, 1960.
Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on January 19, 1943,[2] to Dorothy Bonita East (February 15, 1913 – December 13, 1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (April 19, 1910 – May 10, 1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the Church of Christ.[3] 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."[4] As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Lead Belly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer.[5] 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.[5] Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers."[4] As a teen, she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which required dermabrasion.[4][6][7] Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig", "freak", "nigger lover" or "creep".[4] 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[6] and later the University of Texas at Austin, though she did not complete her studies.[8] The campus newspaper The Daily Texan ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different".[8] The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levis 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."[8]
Singing career: 1962–1965
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.[9]
Texas
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 University of Texas student in December 1962, was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do".[10]
San Francisco
She left Texas for San Francisco ("just to get away from Texas", she said, "because my head was in a much different place"[11]) 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 user.[2][5][6] 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 in San Francisco, noticing the physical effects of her intravenous methamphetamine habit (she was described as "skeletal"[5] and "emaciated"[2]), 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.[2]
Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had."[12]
For at least six months after she returned to her parents' home in Port Arthur, she regularly corresponded by mail with Peter de Blanc,[13] with whom she had been romantically involved in San Francisco.[14] De Blanc, a year and ten months her junior,[15] was a well-educated New Yorker.[16][17] Shortly after he and Joplin both moved away from San Francisco and their beatnik lifestyle, de Blanc was hired by IBM to work with computers at the company's location in East Fishkill, New York,[18][19] and Joplin's letters reached him at his New York home.[20]
Back in Texas
Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, Joplin changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman, Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering from major health problems. Another of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman.
Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965.[21] Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers,[22][23] he visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage.[14] Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding.[7][14] De Blanc, who traveled frequently,[24] terminated plans for the marriage soon afterwards.[25][7]
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 entitled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley.
Big Brother and the Holding Company: 1966–1968
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.[26] 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.[7] When a visitor injected drugs in front of Joplin and Getz, Joplin angrily reminded Getz that he had broken his promise.[7] 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. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.[27]
On August 23, 1966,[28] during a four-week engagement in Chicago, the group signed a deal with independent label Mainstream Records.[12] Joplin relapsed into drinking when she and her bandmates (except for bassist 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.[5] 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.[5] Three years later, Joplin, by then playing with a different band, was informed of Gurley's death from an overdose.[5] 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.[29][30][31] 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.[2][12] 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.[12]
Monterey and breakthrough
The band's debut studio album, Big Brother and the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival.[11] 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", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. 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".[5] 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,[32] 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.[2][5] 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, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968 in 2012. 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",[12] and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band.[12] 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.[12] 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."[4]
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.[2] 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,[33] the album launched Joplin's successful, albeit short, musical career.[34] Cheap Thrills reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, remaining for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks.[34] The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release.[7][12] The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968.[35]
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 a concert that Bill Graham (promoter) publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. But the band toured the United States that fall. Two performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, at a time when the Washington, D.C. area's hard rock scene was in its infancy, were reviewed by John Segraves of the Evening Star.[36] An opera buff at the time,[37] he wrote, "Miss Joplin, in her early 20s, has been for the last year or two the vocalist with Big Brother and the Holding Company, a rock quintet of superior electric expertise. Shortly she will be merely Janis Joplin, a vocalist singing folk rock on her first album as a single. Whatever she does and whatever she sings she'll do it well because her vocal talents are boundless. This is the way she came across in a huge, high-ceilinged roller skating rink without any acoustics but, thankfully a good enough sound system behind her. In a proper room, I would imagine there would be no adjectives to describe her."[36] Later that month, October 1968, Big Brother performed at University of Massachusetts Amherst[38] and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.[38] During a November concert at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, bassist Peter Albin made fun of Joplin in front of their audience, joking that when she panted after finishing a song she sounded like Lassie.[5] Joplin's last performance with Big Brother, not counting two reunions in 1970, was at a Family Dog benefit on December 1, 1968.[2][5]
Solo career: 1969–1970
Kozmic Blues Band
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.[2][5][7] 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, ($2500 in 2014 dollars)[6] 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.[7] Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in cinemas in the documentary Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975.[39] The film shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue while an American fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera.
No security was used in Frankfurt so by the end of the concert the stage was so packed with people that the band members could not see each other. Another film was made of the band's performance in Stockholm featuring Joplin's interpretation of "Summertime". The Janis documentary also includes interviews with her in Stockholm and from her visit to London for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. After appearing on German television, the Kozmic Blues Band performed on several American 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 Dick 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 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.
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.[34] 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 Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured in the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound.[citation needed]
Some music critics, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother...(if they'll have her)."[2]
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.[citation needed]
Columbia Records 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 in Germany and became a top ten hit there. 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 soon after its release.[citation needed]
Woodstock
Joplin appeared at Woodstock in the late hours of Saturday, August 16, 1969. She performed until the early morning hours of Sunday, August 17. Despite her reportedly not even knowing of the festival's existence, the Woodstock promoters were advertising her as a headliner. She thus became one of the main attractions of the historic concert. Her friend Peggy Caserta claims in her book Going Down With Janis (1973) that she had encouraged a reluctant Joplin to perform at Woodstock.
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 the pregnant Joan Baez and her mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became incredibly nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She deferred them to Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform, but she kept getting delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform before her. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, she shot heroin[5][6] with Caserta and was drinking alcohol, so by the time she hit the stage, she was "three sheets to the wind".[2] Joplin took the stage following Creedence Clearwater Revival. 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, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. 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.
Pete Townshend, who performed with The Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible.".[40]
Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. She is said[by whom?] to have really enjoyed Sly and The Family Stone's performance, who came on immediately after her. Joan Baez also revealed in her autobiography that she and Joplin witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance from Joe Cocker's van.[citation needed]
Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. However, Joplin was ultimately unhappy with her performance and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) 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". The documentary film of the festival that was released to theaters in 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward her dressing room tent.[41] Laura Joplin said in an interview that her older sister went straight home to Port Arthur following Woodstock. She was incredibly vibrant and happy after coming home and really loved the festival. She told her family how great it was, but her mother and father remained distant on the subject as they did not really understand the hippie movement.
Madison Square Garden
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 drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania."[7] During a Garden concert where she got solo billing on December 19, some observers believed she tried to incite the audience to riot.[7] For part of this concert she was joined onstage by special guests Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield.
Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes."[12] 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 the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield.[2][12]
Full Tilt Boogie Band
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."[14] Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.[12] 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."[5] 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."[5] 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."[5]
"I'm not really thinking much, just sort of, trying to feel" – Joplin, having been asked by Dick Cavett what she thought about when she sang.
Joplin began using heroin again when she returned to the United States. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because of him 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.[5][42] Around this time she formed her new band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band.[2][5][7] 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!"[2]
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.[2] 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.[5] 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.[5]
Festival Express
Janis Joplin sculpture (copper, sheet, 62cm) in Budapest's Ferenc Erkel Grade School, Hungary, sculptor: László Szlávics, Jr.
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, The Band, Ten Years After, Grateful Dead, Delaney and Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia.[5] They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary.[5][12] Janis jammed with the other performers on the train and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest.
Joplin persuaded The Band, who originally did not want to perform, to do so 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 of "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. Some of her full performances of Festival Express exist, although all the 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.[2][5]
During the Festival Express tour, Joplin was accompanied by Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, who later wrote several articles and two books 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.[12]
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."[43] (Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys during her university years.[44]) In a subsequent Cavett broadcast on August 3, 1970, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later.
Joplin's last public performance, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift sound amplifiers after their regular equipment was stolen in Boston.[7]
Joplin attended her high-school reunion on August 14, accompanied by fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and her sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her.[45] Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. Rolling Stone journalist Chet Flippo reported that she wore enough jewelry for a "Babylonian whore".[5] When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles."[2][2][4] Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier.[2]
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[34] 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.[46] 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 in Hollywood on August 24, 1970,[47] near Sunset Sound Recorders,[5] 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 novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August.[2][5][6] She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September[4] even though he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions.[5] Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded while in the studio.[7] Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark,[7] although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died.[5]
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.[6] Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess[6] and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury,[6] said that by September 1970, she was smuggling marijuana throughout California[6] and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users.[6] For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles.[6] Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there.[6] Joplin begged Caserta for heroin[6] and when she refused, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it."[6] Within a few days Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer.[6]
Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Myra Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York.[7] In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but they were unaware that it was a haven for drug users and dealers.[7] Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills,[6] and on later occasions, used heroin.[7] During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while.[7] Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California.[7] She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer.[7]
When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.," according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.[48] Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her,[7] though he did on the night she died.[7] He was not interested in experimenting with hard drugs.[7]
On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby".[49] Then Full Tilt Boogie recorded the instrumental track for "Buried Alive in the Blues".[49] The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon.[49] Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday[50] on October 9. Joplin, Pearson and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death.[50]
The last recording Joplin completed was on October 1, 1970 – "Mercedes Benz". On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders[5] to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites' song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded one week earlier.[49] She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day.[12][14] At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone that Seth Morgan was staying at her Larkspur home and using her pool table with other women he had met that day.[7] Others in the studio overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan,[7] as well as joy about the progress of the sessions.[7] She and band member Ken Pearson later left the studio and went to Barney's Beanery[51] for drinks. After midnight, Joplin drove him and a fan back to the Landmark Motor Hotel.[7]
Death
On Sunday, October 4, 1970, producer Paul 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 Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356C Cabriolet in the parking lot. Upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was an overdose of heroin, possibly compounded by alcohol.[7][52] 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.[53]
Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2. She had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night.[6] 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.[5][6] During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up.[6] (Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk to get rid of all her incoming phone callers after midnight.)[6] Morgan did speak to Joplin on the telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise.[5]
Joplin's will funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party, which took place October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, fiancé Seth Morgan, and close friends, including tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and road manager Cooke.
Legacy
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, also at age 27. 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.[54]
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".[5] 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.[5] 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."[5] Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered.[5]
According to biographers, 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.[2][7] Big Brother guitarist James Gurley "finally got clean and sober in 1984," wrote Ellis Amburn.[5] Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995", wrote Alice Echols.[2] In 2000, Caserta appeared on-camera for a segment about Joplin on 20/20.[55]
Joplin, along with Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane, opened opportunities in the rock music business for future female singers.[54]
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.[56] 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 J. Pollard, frequented Limbo on St. Mark's 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.
The Mamas & the Papas 1971 song "Pearl" from their People Like Us album was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's 1974 song "Chelsea Hotel #2" is about Joplin.[57] Likewise, lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death.[58][59] 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.[60] Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties", mentioned Joplin. A 1978 Serge Gainsbourg-penned song in French by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" references Joplin alongside other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones or Marc Bolan. Country Joe McDonald wrote a song called "Janis" from the album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967).
At the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, Nina Simone, whom Joplin admired greatly, commented on Joplin and referred to the 1975 documentary Janis (film) that evidently was screened at the festival:
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 her act with a rendition of "Little Girl Blue".
The 1979 film The Rose was loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname, and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story.[61][62] Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
In 1987, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated in Port Arthur, Texas.[63]
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.[64]
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.[65] 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.[66] She was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series for 2009.[67]
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.
In 2006, Marty Angelo, band manager for Raven, wrote about an experience he had with Janis in his book, Once Life Matters: A New Beginning.[68] It seems Joplin loved the sound of Angelo's band after hearing them perform on numerous nights at Steve Paul's popular NYC nightclub, the Scene. When the band played at Ungano's Night Club in Manhattan in 1968, Joplin arrived with an entourage which included three professional tape recorders. She wanted to capture Raven's sound. That did not go over well with the members of the band, and they insisted Joplin not be allowed to record their show. The band's manager, Marty Angelo, asked club owner Nick Ungano to step in. Ungano did not want to mess with Joplin but reluctantly agreed. Ungano blamed the entire fiasco on Angelo telling Joplin that Raven's manager demanded she not be allowed to record. Ungano also told Joplin that Angelo was refusing to allow the band to go on stage until all recorders were removed from the club. "Manager?" Joplin screamed. She then exploded with a barrage of profanity, insisting that Ungano tell Angelo to "go fuck himself" and stormed out of the club along with her tape recorders. Angelo later became friends with Joplin and helped her acquire organist Richard Kermode for her "Kozmic Blues Band."
There have been many attempts at making a film about Joplin. On June 13, 2010, producer Wyck Godfrey said Amy Adams would play the starring role in director Fernando Meirelles' biographical drama[69] titled Janis Joplin: Get It While You Can.[61] 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 Pink; 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.[61]
In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin puts on a concert for the audience, while telling stories of her past inspirations including Odetta, Aretha Franklin, and others. It is expected to move to Broadway's Lyceum Theater in the fall.[70]
Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 4, 2013. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute.[71]
Influence
Painting of Janis Joplin
Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink, aka Alecia Moore, says Janis Joplin was her ultimate influence. Pink has performed a live version of a Janis Joplin medley, which can be seen on her 'Live in Europe' DVD. She talks about how Janis represented 'Freedom'. Pink is often described as possessing similar characteristics as Janis, such as: a hoarse, husky sounding voice and even the same laugh. Pink has once stated: "I would love to play her (Janis) in a movie". 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.[72]
Stevie Nicks considers Joplin one of her idols, saying:
You could say that being yelled at by Janis Joplin was one of the great honors of my life. Early in my career, Lindsey Buckingham and I were in a band called Fritz. There were two gigs we played in San Francisco that changed everything for me - One was opening up for Jimi Hendrix, who was completely magical. The other was the time that we opened up for Janis at the San Jose Fairgrounds, around 1970.
It was a hot summer day, and things didn't start off well because the entire show was running late. That meant our set was running over. We were onstage and going over pretty well, when I turned and saw a furious Janis Joplin on the side of the stage, yelling at us. She was screaming something like, "What the fuck are you assholes doing? Get the hell off of my stage." Actually, she might have even been a little cruder than that — it was hard to hear.
But then Janis got up on that stage with her band, and this woman who was screaming at me only moments before suddenly became my new hero. Janis Joplin was not what anyone would call a great beauty, but she became beautiful because she made such a powerful and deep emotional connection with the audience. I didn't mind the feathers and the bell-bottom pants either. Janis didn't dress like anyone else, and she definitely didn't sing like anyone else.
Janis put herself out there completely, and her voice was not only strong and soulful, it was painfully and beautifully real. She sang in the great tradition of the rhythm & blues singers that were her heroes, but she brought her own dangerous, sexy rock & roll edge to every single song. She really gave you a piece of her heart. And that inspired me to find my own voice and my own style.
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