Description
Janis' stellar solo debut
Sourced from the original master tape
Jacket meticulously recreated from the original art
The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist.
This underrated 1969 recording was Janis Joplin's first solo studio album after she left Big Brother & the Holding Company. One objection at the time of its release centered on the horn section, which Big Brother loyalists were determined to hate to death. Moreover, the aggregate of musicians backing Joplin — she named the band Kozmic Blues — never solidified as a group, even after earning a warm response on a European tour that spring. There was considerable turnover among the players pulled in for the sessions and considerable discontent as well. Producer Gabriel Mekler would have gladly dumped the band entirely. The best tracks on the album resulted from a single session in June 1969: a supremely delivered rendition of "One Good Man" (with the great Mike Bloomfield on guitar), and, above all, "Little Girl Blue." The Rodgers and Hart estates, however, absolutely loathed Joplin's version of the song, as did a gaggle of older musicians. Joplin changed the words somewhat and made a magnificent tearjerker out of a song that was first performed by Doris Day.