Janis Joplin great or not ???????????????????  

I liked a few of her songs also but did not know much about her at all. I don't remember a whole lot about what she looked like ro how she dressed. I really can't say anything about that. I do know you don't here much about her anymore recently.

Wow dude, if you weren't on my friends list, I'd slap you upside the head! lol
Janis Joplin was first a beatnik, singing jazz, and graduating to belting the blues in the mein of Bessie Smith. Later among the flower children of San Francisco, she joined a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company. Remember them? These were the days when heavy rock was just emerging on underground FM stations and the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war dominated politics, campuses and music. Big Brother music coined psychedelic rock and became famous Stateside for it, with Janis as part of the band. That's where her legendary status as a heavy rock singer began. The Summer of Love Festival in 1967 rocketed Janis to super stardom with her rendition of "Ball and Chain". The result of this Festival was Big Brother putting out their Cheap Thrills album in 1968 and the band was now calling themselves 'Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company'. They were superstars and Cheap Thrills went gold almost overnight. The were the leading lights of the hippie rock generation which meant a lot of drugs and that's when JJ and BB&HC parted ways in December 1968. Janis formed her own group and got back to her blues/jazz roots. In an industry where heavy rock was dominated by men at the time, Janis Joplin paved the way for all female bands and the acceptance of women in 'serious rock' music venues. Her new group was more famous in Europe than it was Stateside and eventually she found her true voice with 'white blues' and the group Full Tilt Boogie Band, a more professional rock presentation of her style of music. But she was also a child of her generation and heroin eventually became her downfall, like so many other great musicians of the time. She died of an accicendtal overdose at the age of 27 and her third album was released after her death. That's the ablum that included Me and Bobby McGee and Mercedes Benz. Can you imagine what she would have achieved had she lived? She was a beatnik, a hippie, a blues/jazz smokey voiced rocker. She was an incredible talent with a weakness for drugs, but she was truly great and the world suffered a terrible loss with her early death. Just like Hendrix, Morrison, and so many others.

I agree. I have never cared for Janis Joplin to much myself at all. I can't hardly stand to here her sing. There are so many other singers out there that sound so much better then her. I don't understand why she got rated the greatest woman rock singer that has got to be a joke.

I like Janis Joplin and have read a biography. I think she went through (like many people) a harsh childhood where she went from being really popular to unpopular. She had a hard time with acne and weight etc. and she just rebelled.

Her rebellion took the only form that she new how to shock people - using drugs, drinking, being promiscius and 'dressing down'.

She did have a fantastic voice - OK some people call it yelling, but it was powerful. And she was a white girl singing black songs in a time when this wasn't really accepted. A lot of musicians of the time thought she was great, including Jimi Hendrix ... if they thought she was good.....

However freedom of speech allow us all to have our own views, thank goodness!

Thanks for sharing this with us.

She had one of the best voices rock/blues has ever known. I am sorry you can't hear it.As women and rock and rol goes, she is the best.