Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin Phone Cards

Janis Joplin & Grace Slick

Janis With Big Brother & the Holding Company

Jan 19, 1943: Janis Lyn Joplin is born in Port Arthur, Texas.

July 27, 1962: The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, published a profile of Janis headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin."

June 4, 1966: Joplin joined Big Brother & the Holding Company.

January 29, 1967: Joplin performed at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple.

February 16, 1968:  Big Brother began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia.

April 7, 1968: Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York.

April 12-13, 1968:  Big Brother recorded "Live at Winterland '68" at the Winterland Ballroom.

July 31, 1968: Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett.

September 14, 1968: culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. 

 Dec 1, 1968: Joplin did last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco.

July 18, 1969: On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody".

Aug 17, 1969: Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday.  Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible."

Aug 18, 1969: Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance.

 Apr 4, 1970: Janis performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco.

April 12, 2022: Janis again appeared with Big Brother at Winterland.

May 21, 1970: Janis performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California.

 June 25, 1970: Janis appeared on the Dick Cavett Show. She announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state."

July 11, 1970: Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union.

 August 3, 1970: Janis appeared on the Dick Cavett Show. Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later.

August 7, 1970: A tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave.

August 8, 1970: Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier.

Aug 12, 1970: Joplin did her last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band
at the  Harvard Stadium in Boston.

Aug 14, 1970: Joplin attended her high school reunion, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura.

Aug 24, 1970: Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood  near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album.

September 26, 1970: Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon.

October 1, 1970: Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take.

October 3, 1970:  Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day.

October 4, 1970: Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27.  Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke.

Hit Parader 10/71

Jan 19, 1988: On what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas.

May 2, 1999: Kim France reported in a New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator."

November 4, 2013: Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute.

August 8, 2014: The U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park.