1943-1970
Rock Singer

A Symbol of the 1960s.

Janis Joplin was more than just one of the most talented blues and rock vocalists of the twentieth century: she was also a personality, a symbol of rebellion adopted by youth anxious to "let it all hang out" in the late 1960s. Uninhibited both as a performer and in her personal life, Joplin personified what many saw as the spirit of rock in the late 1960s, and her untimely death was a sobering reminder of where the excesses of the rock spirit could lead.

Youthful Success.

An outcast as an adolescent, Joplin ran away from her Port Arthur, Texas, home at age seventeen and worked as a singer in different cities before joining the rock group Big Brother and the Holding Company in San Francisco in 1966. Thanks to Joplin's versatile, roaring vocals and equally unrestrained performance style, the...