![]() ![]() The documentary begins with a letter Joplin had written to her family the same year she died. If we can remember Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, other members of the “27 club,” for more than their tragic deaths, we also owe it to Joplin.īut the longing we hear in songs like “Piece of My Heart” and “Cry Baby” also emerges in Joplin’s letters. Women are remembered for the tragedy, the loss.” “I do feel that women are remembered differently than men in that realm of young stars who overdosed,” Berg told Vogue. It stitches together archival footage, family photos and her electric performances at Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival to craft a more complete picture of an artist who wailed the blues on stage. Later that fall, the 27-year-old rock star died of a heroin overdose in Los Angeles.īut Joplin, the documentary argues, is more than her downfall.Įight years in the making, Berg’s film complicates the public memory of Joplin as a cautionary tale of rock and roll excess. Instead, the reunion committee presented a tire to Joplin for traveling the greatest distance to the event. “ thought it could be a triumph of people being curious and applauding, and it should have been.”Ī public recognition of Joplin’s achievements never really came that evening. “No one was up there and saying, ‘Can you believe what Janis Joplin has been able to have done?'” she told NewsHour. Laura, who was at her sister’s side, was disgusted. An excerpt of that interview appears in Amy Berg’s documentary “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” which is available to watch online as part of PBS’ “American Masters” series. There was a scheduled Q&A with reporters on the day of the reunion, where the press harped on the differences between Joplin and her classmates. ![]() Just be yourself,” Laura Joplin remembered telling her big sister in 1992’s “Love, Janis,” noting that it was the feathers in the singer’s hair, in particular, that bugged her. “Janis, this is a group of people coming to see people, not stars. Weeks before the event, she appeared on “The Dick Cavett Show,” saying that her former classmates “laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state.” The counter-culture icon donned rose-colored glasses and purple and pink boas in her hair when she returned to Port Arthur, Texas, in August 1970, hoping for a warmer acceptance than what she remembered from her gawky adolescence. Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC.Janis Joplin arrived at her 10th high school reunion dressed for the stage. Janis Joplin’s Last TV Performance & Interview: The Dick Cavett Show (1970) Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Interview Get Reborn as an Animated Cartoon Tom Jones Performs “Long Time Gone” with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audience Away (1969) “That’s to encourage everybody to stand up.” Joplin’s death the following year deprived the world of one of its all-time greatest blues singers, but thanks to the internet, and Tom Jones, we’ll always have performances like these to remember her by. “I make it a policy not to tell anyone to sit down,” she says by way of introduction. Hear her live version of “Raise Your Hand” at Woodstock from earlier that year, further up, and see her tear it up in Frankfurt on her European tour with the Kozmic Blues Band. This includes any stage that had her on it, which she immediately dominated as soon as she opened her mouth. Then when Janis and I did the rehearsal for Raise Your Hand she looked at me and said, ‘Jesus, you can really sing! (laughs) I thought, thank God people like Janis Joplin had taken note.” If she outshines Jones in the televised performance of the song, above, and I think we can agree she does, he doesn’t seem to mind it much. “God bless her,” Jones remembered, “she said to me when she came on, ‘Look, I don’t do variety shows I’m only doing it because it’s you.’ So she saw through it. Well, she had a hangup, but it wasn’t Jones. Janis Joplin didn’t have any such hangups when she went on Jones’ show that same year. But who cares about Neil Young’s cranky dislike of commercial television? Who is Neil Young to say we can’t enjoy Jones’ bravado vocals on Crosby, Stills, Nash & sometimes Young’s “Long Time Gone”? The audience sure got a kick out of it, as apparently did the rest of the band. Certain purists have been a tougher sell on Jones’ act, including, in 1969, Neil Young, who joined Jones onstage once, and only once, on the This is Tom Jones show and immediately regretted it. If you’re a fan of Tom Jones and you don’t care who knows it, then no one needs to justify the jovial Welsh superstar’s lounge-soul covers of pop, R&B, and rock songs to you.
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