The Cavern
Rock & Words
JANIS JOPLIN
“Dawn has come at last,
twenty-five years, honey
just in one night…”
"C"
Main Decade: 60’s
Main Eras:
Psychedelia (1966-1969)
Key Members:
Janis Joplin, Vocals
Sam Andrews, Guitar
Jim Gurley, Guitar
Key Songs:
Piece of My Heart, Summertime, Ball & Chain, Maybe, Cry Baby, Down On Me, Try (Just A lIttle bit Harder), Kozmic Blues, Bye Bye Baby, Work Me Lord, Move Over, Me and Bobby McGee, Mercedes Benz, Flower in the Sun, The Last Time
Janis is such a huge figure in music history because she did with her voice exactly what Hendrix did with his guitar. It took me a long time to understand her; at first, I only knew "Piece of My Heart," "Cry," and two or three other hits. But as I listened to her more attentively and heard more songs, I realized more and more that this woman didn't just sing… Without even realizing it, I reached the point where I felt incredibly offended at a Blue Jeans rehearsal when one of the band members commented that Janis was the same garbage as Ana Gabriel, singing with grunts. I didn't say anything out of respect, but I surprised myself by finding a trillion arguments to refute such slander. Even today, I still think that comparison is like saying Hendrix is the same as Ronnie Wood.
Anyway, I know it's a cliché, but I'll say it again: Janis didn't just sing, she poured her soul into every recording and every concert; she died every time she was in front of a microphone. That way of singing, of tearing her throat and heart out with such sincerity… You can almost touch that sadness, that loneliness, that ultimatum-like, testamentary vibe she infused into every performance. I know it's been said many times before. And there's not much to add to what's already been said about Janis Joplin: she wasn't technically the best... in that respect, Aretha Franklin or Karen Carpenter were far superior (yes, I admire her voice even though I detest her lyrical melodiousness); Janis was more like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday than Diana Ross or Ana Torroja, but she was far more full of life and expression than all of them combined.
Janis transcended mere technique. She knew how to nurture every inflection, how to use both her throat and lungs to create breathtakingly beautiful atmospheres with a husky, raw voice that without talent would have sounded like... errrr... Ana Gabriel? She also elevated vocal blues to its zenith and became a generational diva and guru, something like Morrison's female counterpart.
I'm not going to delve into her personal life. You can find the main details on Wikipedia or any fan site, and I haven't read any extensive biography yet. What I do know is that from a young age she was influenced by music through her mother, who also had some vocal talent. That, and that from adolescence onward her life was a string of failures and tragedies that turned her into a solitary, angry, and sad person. I know that she somehow tried to channel all those feelings through her voice: singing was a catharsis that freed her, at least for a few minutes, from the real world, and THAT is what sets her apart from the rest of the best vocalists: her sincerity and passion. She knew how to decipher the root with which the blues should be interpreted: Sadness.
Her vocal range is not easy to grasp. Janis sang with a pumice stone texture in her throat, and her high, whiskey-soaked registers are her signature. However, she also masterfully commands low and mid-range tones, achieving impressive crescendos and shifts in her songs. Examples? Ball & Chain. She takes it from a whisper to an explosion full of phrasing, improvisation, and energy, to that point where she lowers the intensity again to sing a cappella and ends in an ironic monologue with an equally devastating voice.
I don't know what else to write. I don't know if Janis's music should be described. It's an experience that HAS to be listened to repeatedly and in different moods to be fully understood. Precisely these days, as I've been working on this intro, it's difficult for me to continue writing while listening because my mood isn't the best, and the music pulls me along into rather dark territories, taking me away from the keyboard and the idea I really want to express. Janis expresses so much sadness and inner emptiness in her voice, and with such sincerity, that if you listen carefully, you might find yourself on a metaphysical slide.
This feeling is especially strong when listening to her early albums from when she was still with Big Brother and had a closer connection to the blues. Personally, I didn't think this band was bad at all. They weren't virtuosos on their instruments or anything like that, but they knew how to create the perfect atmosphere in the songs to make the lead vocals sound flawless. Sam Andrews and James Gurley's guitars made the music sound like a velvet glove for her voice—furious and raw when she screamed, melancholic when her throat seemed about to burst into tears—always complementing Janis's intensity and creating emotional and atmospheric shifts that the Pearl would struggle to achieve after leaving them. It's true, Janis's voice improved after she left Big Brother & The Holding Company, and I don't think Kozmic Blues is as bad an album as many claim, but I personally believe that Janis's true genre was the blues, not gospel, country, and the other genres she began experimenting with. And I definitely prefer the wild, melodic guitars that play with countless arrangements when the song stayed in a single key for a while, to the brass, bland guitar solos, and more danceable rhythms of the post-BB&THC era.
The truth is that throughout her career, Janis had an incredibly powerful and perfect voice, when she wasn't too high or drunk to even hold the microphone, of course (like at Woodstock). If you don't believe me, listen to "Cry" from her last studio album. Janis's voice is of a very rare beauty. I've already commented on the other great vocalists in the history of rock, blues, and pop, and Janis's is perhaps the most distinct. It reminds me of a Bukowski poem, in which, with a touch of melancholy and brutal honesty, this writer can create moving poetry in the description of a garbage dump or a sewer. Thus Janis takes melodies that would sound like bland songs in the hands of any average vocalist, infuses them with her raw, powerful voice, and transforms them into collector's items. No one but her could have made "Summertime," a song that teeters between devastation and eroticism, which, in my opinion, is her best work.
Janis Joplin isn't the myth she is because she died at the height of her fame, perpetuating the legend of the 27 Club. She did enough in her lifetime to become a symbol of the hippie movement before her death. From her unparalleled voice and the passion she displayed in concert, making her an example of stage presence and audience interaction (in this aspect, no one can match her, and there are many live recordings that attest to this); to her improvisations and ability to extend a song that doesn't have much melodically, but with her, it never gets boring for a second; to her role as a guide for a generation, along with Dylan, Morrison, and Lennon, each of whom, in their own way, made us believe for a moment in Flower Power and that music could be something more than just music.
Today, I wonder which female singer is worth comparing to her. Really, none in rock. And don't even get me started on the other pop singers who are so fashionable, and who sound more like the clatter of cash registers raking in dollars than singing.
Finally, Janis had another similarity to Hendrix: I get the impression that she wasn't fully aware of what she was creating. She sang partly by intuition, partly out of a need to exorcise demons, without overthinking it. Perhaps that's why she sounds like a wild flower, and perhaps that's precisely why she's more hypnotic and moving than the rest, despite having less technical skill. Her lyrics aren't philosophical revelations by any means, but they retain a freshness and fit perfectly with the simplicity and sadness of the blues, and they align with the moods the melodies create. So, for me, they're not as bad (or inappropriate) as many claim.
The lineup of Big Brother & The Holding Company, which in my opinion should have been her only band, was: Jim Gurley and Sam Andrews on guitars, Pete Albin on bass, and Dave Getz on drums, in addition, of course, to Janis Lyn Joplin on vocals.
I leave you with a phrase that sums up the broken spirit of the Pearl: "I made love to 25,000 people on stage and then went home alone..." Listening to the live version of Summertime, one realizes that drugs were a pretext, but they weren't what killed her.
Ladies and gentlemen, with you, the Pearl who left us a piece of her heart every time she picked up a microphone: Janis Joplin!
By Corvan
Jul/15/2011
