Pearl hit number one after Janis Joplin died at twenty-seven
Port Arthur–born Janis Joplin (1943–1970) detonated into fame at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with Big Brother and the Holding Company. After two band albums she went solo; a heroin overdose killed her at twenty-seven, and Pearl topped the Billboard 200 in January 1971.
Joplin grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, the daughter of a Texaco engineer and a business-college registrar. Bullied at school, she fell in with a group of outsiders, one of whom owned records by Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Lead Belly, and she later credited those albums with making her want to sing. At the University of Texas the student paper profiled her in July 1962 under the headline She Dares to Be Different, describing a barefoot student who carried an autoharp everywhere. She sang with a folk trio, the Waller Creek Boys, and modelled herself on blues women and Beat poets.
In January 1963 she hitchhiked to San Francisco with her friend Chet Helms. There she recorded blues standards with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, his wife's typewriter clacking in the background. Her drug use deepened, and by May 1965 friends alarmed at her emaciated state held a party to raise her bus fare home. Back in Texas, down to 88 pounds, she gave up drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, enrolled at Lamar University, got engaged, and saw a counsellor who tried to persuade her she could succeed in music without narcotics.
Helms, now managing Big Brother and the Holding Company, sent a friend to fetch her from Austin, and she joined the band on 4 June 1966, first playing with them at the Avalon Ballroom. She told her parents she was joining a group in Austin. Later backing bands were the Kozmic Blues Band and the Full Tilt Boogie Band, and she played Woodstock in 1969.
Her cover of Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee reached number one in March 1971, after her death. Mercedes Benz was her last recording. Rolling Stone ranked her 28th among the greatest singers in 2008, and certified US album sales stand at 18.5 million.
Source: Janis Joplin
