Together they were able to craft an album that showcased her extraordinary vocal talents. Rothchild was best-known as the recording studio producer of The Doors, and worked well with Joplin, calling her a producer's dream. The album has a more polished feel than the albums she recorded with Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Kozmic Blues Band due to the expertise of producer Paul A. It has been certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA. It peaked at number one on the Billboard 200, holding that spot for nine weeks.
#JANIS JOPLIN PIECE OF MY HEART MEANING FULL#
It was the final album with her direct participation, and the only Joplin album recorded with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, her final touring unit. My dad beamed from the floor.Pearl is the second and final solo album (and fourth album overall) by Janis Joplin, released on January 11, 1971, three months after her death on October 4, 1970. Likely, none of the crowd members still munching pizza Lunchables could identify my muse, but Principal Woods laughed until she cried in the back of the cafeteria. Finally I launched it over a crowd of unsuspecting elementary school students as I shrieked, “TAKE IT.” I reached the “come on” refrain of “Piece of My Heart,” swinging the boa around in a softball pitch windup. “I’m gonna show you baby/ That a woman can be tough!” This was my favorite song, and this was my moment. The kids laughed when I walked onstage, and I felt a brief twinge of terror and regret as a mom backstage hit “play.” The giggles continued through the guitar build-up, but as soon as I grabbed the microphone I left my fears behind. Add in blue sunglasses, a woven headband, and a blue feather boa, and I had transformed into a 10-year old version of my favorite singer. I donned a tie-dyed shirt my dad picked up at a blues festival over an all-sequined purple dress. I went on after a girl sang Shania Twain’s “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?,” likely an age inappropriate choice in retrospect. The fourth grade talent show was no joke at my school. This was an idea Joplin was able to overcome with undeniable talent. It wasn’t a drum march for equality, but a middle finger to a conceptualized view of her world. Women is losers/ And then women is losers/ I know you must-a heard it all/ I said now men always seem to end up on top anyway. She tackled the imbalance of equality with Big Brother & the Holding Company on “Women is Losers.” In Joplin’s love narrative, she never acted as the submissive, but instead purveyed a genderless longing and desire, confronting a still relevant problem of gender-infused lyrical directives. Rather, she relied on devastating blues as a vehicle for her music, using that to rise above crippling stereotypes. Joplin was freed of being sexualized by her own insecurity. There was no guise of sexual icon from a woman who received the cruel title “Ugliest Man on Campus” by the University of Texas student body.
Rock was still a psychedelic sect of a decade just beginning to break from Leave It to Beaver family gender roles. It was a “Foxy Lady” society, where the liberated chick emerged as sexually adventurous and powerful, and yet became canonized in songs that set her as an object of desire for equally liberated men. While rock music maintained a subversive lifestyle, sexist undertones encapsulated much of the counterculture message. She never campaigned for any specific cause, while contemporaries like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan led the charge on bra-burning feminism. Joplin’s form of feminism was a direct product of her time. In short, I was a father’s dream at a time when Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears painted a bare-belly picture of femininity for my peers. I knew about the Full Tilt Boogie Band and Big Brother & the Holding Company. Before I was 10, I had memorized every word on Pearl. Thanks to my dad’s music tutelage, the Port Arthur native was introduced to me at a young age. She was, perhaps, my first lesson on having the proverbial balls to kick down any door - even to the boys' club. They set fire to and scoffed at a “man’s world,” beginning a fight that I hope I further each day.Īs a music writer, my thoughts on the subject continually return to one woman: Janis Joplin. There’s a growing list of women who have made it possible to exist in a society that accepts me as an outspoken, college-educated, feminist. They were artists, writers, lawmakers – astronauts, CEOs, entrepreneurs. I thought of the suffragettes, the crusaders, the rule breakers. Regardless, these last few weeks let me reflect on my favorite characters in this ever-swelling chronicle. March remains set aside as a celebration of Women’s History, as if we need a 31-day window to pontificate on the achievements of women. My fourth grade self as Janis Joplin (by David Johnston)
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