Janis Joplin was not a very good student in school. In elementary school she received comments such as making acceptable progress, commendable and needs improvement. In Junior high she was becoming more of a problem. Teachers constantly said that Janis talked too much and didn’t get all her work done on time. In 9th grade she received a journalism award. In high school she wrote and illustrated “The Driftwood” which was the school newspaper. In the beginning of high school she started to turn things around. She was a very good student, but still had bad behavior. She decided she wanted to be a painter.
Janis was very talented in art. Her mother made her do something the summer between her junior and senior year. She enrolled for summer courses at Port Arthur Business College. She only lasted one month. When Janis was 17 she went with her friends to college. They all enrolled at Lamar State College of Technology. She had planned to major in art. Janis left after the fall semester because she felt it didn’t suit her artistic needs. She enrolled in Port Arthur College to study typing, keypad, etc. She did it so she would have the minimum required to get a job. She had been able to get a job as a keypunch operator at a telephone company in LA. She had moved from Port Arthur to LA to Venice, and then she moved back home. She enrolled at Lamar again and lived at home. She had later learned about the Austin art scene and transferred to the University of Texas. After a while she moved back to Port Arthur again and took classes in math, industrial science, physical science, United States history, and sociology of marriage. She had begun to take things seriously.
Janis joined Glee Club in her junior high and in 9th grade she sang a solo for the Christmas pageant. That was her first public singing experience beyond the church. Janis realized she could sing while driving around in a car with her Little Theater friends. They were all singing in the car and when she had gotten home she called one of them up and said, “Guess what? I can sing.” He replied, “Oh really? What else is new?” And that began her singing career. She started to sing at local bars. One called “The Sage” allowed her to display some of her artwork and she even sold some. Janis had planned to major in art in college. Once she moved to Venice she started singing a lot more at various places. She had begun to focus more on singing than art. Janis and two friends, Powell St. John and Lanny Wiggins, sang in a talent show held by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department. They won first place. The three of them made a band and named in “The Waller Creek Boys.” They eventually changed it so Janis would be seen in a more feminine way. They made it “The Waller Creek Boys, featuring Janis Joplin.” They started singing weekly at the school sponsored hootenannies. After being with “The Waller Creek Boys” for a while, she got offered to join a band called “Big Brother and the Holding Company.” The band included James Gurley, Peter Albin, Dave Getz, and Sam Andrew. They were fairly successful. She stayed with “Big Brother” for four years, but then she left and went out to make a solo career for herself.
In 10th grade she joined the yearbook staff with people from the Little Theater group. Many people in high school considered her an outcast. Janis believed in things others didn’t. She became very rebellious. She liked to do crazy things with the Little Theater group. They climbed water towers, would just drive around and drink and talk for hours, and many other things. Janis was also never big on dating. Though she did have many boyfriends, she refused to change herself for a guy and would never let him run her life. She liked listening to old black blues singers. She was very interested in radio and hung out at the station a lot with Karleen. Janis had begun coming home later, studying less, and she often displayed her knowledge of vulgar words.
Janis had moved many times when she was in college. She moved to LA, Venice, San Francisco, Austin, back home, and many other places. Janis Joplin had many goals growing up. Most of which had to do with art. She was lucky enough to reach some of her goals. For a very long time she wanted to be an artist. Janis displayed her projects anywhere possible and got many awards and much recognition for them. Not until she was in college did she realize that her real passion was music. She made it. Janis became an extremely successful singer. Janis’s morals declined as she got older, but she started out well.
Marijuana started to become popular in high school. Janis never listened to her parents and did whatever she pleased. Once when she had gone with Karleen to Houston to visit a friend, Karleen left her at a cheap hotel to stay the night. Janis found out in was a whore house, yet she stayed and worked willingly. In college she would often cut class to drink. She had also done crazy things like stripping for the boy’s dorm through the windows. Everyone drank then until they ran out, there were no limits. When Janis had moved to Venice it was one of the centers of the drug world. The more Janis got involved with music and the art scene, the worse things got. She started drinking all the time, and there was rarely a time when she wasn’t drunk. She experimented with many more drugs and really put her life in danger. On October 4, 1970 Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose.
Bibliography
BOOKS:
Barry, Kevin. "Legends." VH1. March 23,1997.
Friedman, Myra. Buried Alive The
Morits, Charles. Biography of Janis Joplin, Current Biography.
New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1971. 209-211. Stambler, Irwin. Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock, and Soul. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997
WEBSITES:
http://www.rotten.com/ bio/ music/janis-joplin/jjplin.html
Friedman, Myra., Buried Alive The, STKS Publisher, page# 74
