Haight Ashbury, Big Brother, and the Summer of Love Unable to handle the rejection, and with her body incapable of withstanding the hard living, Janis would eventually move back to Port Arthur with hopes of kicking her habits through self-will and rehabilitation. She started shooting up Methedrine and drinking 80 proof liquor. By 1964 her musical career was stalling, but her drug fascination was going full-tilt. While in California she would sing in bars and coffeehouses (oftentimes accompanied by her autoharp - picture June Carter Cash). While in Austin, Janis would eventually meet up with Chet Helms who took her away with him to North Beach, California which in 1963 was considered the West Coast's answer to Greenwich Village. The fraternity house, at which Janis would hurl obscenities from her hammock, is still there today. These were supposedly abandoned WWII wooden army barracks where all the student outcasts would eventually find themselves. Though she didn't finish her studies at UT, while there, she lived in a building commonly referred to as "The Ghetto," that was located at 2812 1/2 Nueces Street. Janis would enroll at The University of Texas and occasionally perform at places like Threadgill's which is now a popular chain of restaurants. She then explored Houston and L.A.'s music scenes, but would eventually move back to Texas in 1962 where she would settle in the capital city and music Mecca, Austin.
These Blues and Folk artists were tilling the fertile soil into which Janis' roots would eventually find purchase.īy 1961, Janis would grow restless and drop out of college. She also listened to musicians such as Leadbelly, Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton.
Janis would often travel to nearby Louisiana to hear blues cover bands. Following graduation from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1960, she would enroll in Lamarr College in Beaumont, Texas to study art, as her first love was painting. Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur, TexasĮven though she was extremely shy and reserved about singing in public, Janis would join her church choir during her high school years. As a result of her unpopularity with fellow classmates, Janis would choose the path of hard-swearing and beer drinking, which made her hip with the older boys, but out of place with others of her gender. During her early teens, Janis would develop a host of crippling insecurities fueled by her pudgy body, acne-pocked skin, and hair, once smooth and shiny, that was now tufted and mousy brown. She almost immediately felt out-of-place. However, being well-read and of a sensitive nature were not traits that would make a young Janis (or any young girl for that matter) feel welcome in her stodgy blue-collar home town. Her father would encourage Janis to read as many books as she could and from this advice would blossom Janis' worldly sensitivity and her love for the written word.
When Janis was young, her mother would win a vocal scholarship but turn it down to work as an administrator at a local college. The oldest of three children, she was born in Port Arthur Texas, a grimy coastal city that very nearly straddles the Texas/Louisiana border. Of all musicians from the '60s, none would embody the tumultuous spirit and self-destructive nature of that era more than Janis Lyn Joplin.
0 kommentar(er)
