Janis Lyn Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the oil-refining town of Port Arthur, Texas, near the border with Louisiana. Her father was a cannery worker and her mother was a registrar for a business college. As an overweight teenager, she was a folk-music devotee (especially Odetta, Leadbelly and Bessie Smith). After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, she attended Lamar State College and the University of Texas, where she played auto-harp in Austin bars.

A fraternity voted her the Ugliest Man on Campus in 1963, and she spent two years traveling, performing and becoming drug-addicted. Back home in 1966, her friend Chet Helms suggested she become lead singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, an established Haight-Ashbury band consisting of guitarists James Gurley and Sam Andrew, bassist Peter Albin and drummer Dave Getz). She got wide recognition through the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, highlights of which were released in Monterey Pop (1968), and with the band's landmark second album, "Cheap Thrills". She formed her "Kosmic Blues Band" the following year and achieved still further recognition as a solo performer at Woodstock in 1969, highlights released in Woodstock (1970).

In the spring of 1970, she sang with the "Full Tilt Boogie Band" and, on October 4 of that year, she was found dead in Hollywood's Landmark Motor Hotel (now known as Highland Gardens Hotel) from a heroin-alcohol overdose the previous day. Her ashes were scattered off the coast of California. Her biggest selling album was the posthumously released "Pearl", which contained her quintessential song: "Me & Bobby McGee". (from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0429767/bio)

Janis Joplin / Little Girl Blue / 1968

Photo: dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com

Le film documentaire: Janis Joplin - Love Janis (Vidéo Arte 52’): http://mai68.org/spip/spip.php?article1374

More vidéos:

Janis joplin live (monterey pop festival)

Janis joplin: ball and chain (5' 47)

Woodstock festival, handmade, 40 years ago (+ videos)

More:

http://www.janisjoplin.com/

Janis Joplin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Love, Janis (documentary) http://www.lovejanisthemusical.com/

La discographie de Janis Joplin

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-janis-joplin-disparue-il-y-a-quarante-ans-1943-1970-48067043.html

SRV playing Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) on an outtake of Austin City Limits.

NR HOF 

The Crossroads Guitar Festival is a music festival and benefit concert first held in 2004 and again in 2007 and 2010. The festivals benefit the Crossroads Centre founded by Eric Clapton, a drug treatment center located in Antigua. The concerts are also intended to be a showcase for a variety of guitarists. All were hand-picked by Eric Clapton himself, who addressed the 2007 audience, saying that each were some of the very best, and those who had earned his respect. (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_Guitar_Festival).