Regarded as the greatest white female blues singer, Janis Joplin is also remembered as a hedonistic, hard-drinking, bra-disdaining, bisexual challenger of social conventions. She often is associated with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, a trio of dynamic performers who all died within a year of each other between September 1970 and July 1971, and whose "live hard, die fast" philosophy not only epitomized the 1960s but also tolled the end of that spectacular, turbulent epoch.

Janis Joplin

The young Joplin was an intelligent, creative girl with many interests and talents. Born January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas, she was raised by liberal parents who encouraged her interests in music, art, and literature. Her favorite author was F. Scott Fitzgerald, and she identified with the glamorous, ruinous lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and her favorite singers, Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith. She learned to sing the blues...