Janis Joplin was born to Seth Ward Joplin and Dorothy Bonita East.Her father was an engineer at Texaco. Her mother was the registrar at a business college. Janis had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, including Jim Langdon and Grant Lyons, the latter of whom played her the blues for the first time. She began singing in the local choir and listening to musicians such as Leadbelly, Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she was mostly shunned. Among her high school classmates was another individual destined for stardom: future college and NFL coach Jimmy Johnson. In a 1992 Sports Illustrated profile of his career, Johnson claimed that he gave Janis the high school nickname of "beat weeds." Primarily a painter, in high school she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended the University of Texas at Austin, though she never obtained a degree. She lived in a building commonly referred to as "The Ghetto" which was located at 2812 1/2 Nueces Street. The rent was $40 a month when she lived there. The campus newspaper ran a profile of her in 1962 headlined "She Dares To Be Different." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju9yFA1S7K8 

Cultivating a rebellious manner that could be viewed as "liberated," Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after the Beat poets. She left Texas for San Francisco in 1963, lived in North Beach and in Haight-Ashbury. In Haight-Ashbury, then inhabited mostly by poor African Americans who had no idea the Summer of Love would transform the neighborhood years later, Joplin lived in the same building as the chess master Jude Acers. On June 25, 1964 Janis and future Jefferson Airplane guitar player Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, further accompanied by Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter (as percussion instrument). These sessions, recorded in non-stereo sound on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk," "Trouble In Mind," "Kansas City Blues," "Hesitation Blues," "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out," "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues," and were later released as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. More early recordings are found on the album collection Janis, including the tracks "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", "Mary Jane" and "No Reason For Livin'". Janis on the Dick Cavett Show

Around this time her drug use began to increase, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other intoxicants. She was a heavy drinker throughout her career, and her trademark beverage was Southern Comfort.  Maybe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMN-I8kERdY 

Several months after recording the tracks with Kaukonen, Janis' friends, noticing the physical effects of her speed habit (she weighed 88 pounds), paid for her to travel by Greyhound bus to her parents in Port Arthur, Texas. Whether she required medical assistance in her hometown at this time (April of 1965) is not known, but it is a fact that she changed her entire lifestyle, began wearing relatively modest dresses, a beehive hairdo and enrolled as a sociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Though she avoided drugs, alcohol and bars that she had frequented years earlier, she still corresponded by mail with a methedrine dealer she had known in San Francisco and still considered his proposal of marriage. Shortly after the man visited the Joplin household wearing a conservative suit and tie, charming the entire family and asking Mr. Joplin for permission to marry his daughter, the man broke off contact with Janis. Very possibly, this heartbreak fueled the pain Janis displayed in her music. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman.  TRY from Woodstock_ Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJnoMP1Uyc 

Joplin is now remembered best for her powerful and distinctive voice — her rasping, overtone-rich sound diverged significantly from the soft folk and jazz-influenced styles that were common among many white artists at the time. To many, she personified that period of the Sixties when the San Francisco sound, along with (then considered) outlandish dress and lifestyles, jolted the rest of the country via magazines and television. Many Joplin fans remember her appearances on The Dick Cavett Show with an obviously delighted Cavett. Ball and Chain_ woodstock http://youtube.com/watch?v=8PG2TDaJDhQ 

Joplin's contributions to the rock idiom were long overlooked, but her importance is now becoming more widely appreciated, thanks in part to the recent release of the long-unreleased documentary film, Festival Express. Janis's vocal style, her flamboyant dress, her outspokenness and sense of humour, her liberated stance (politically and sexually) and her hard-living image all combined to create an entirely new kind of female persona in rock and challenged prescriptive gender stereotypes.  Tell Moma http://youtube.com/watch?v=w6ou63LX0NM 

Joplin followed the precedent set by her white male counterparts in adopting the image, repertoire and performance style of black blues and rhythm & blues artists, both male and female. Alongside Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, she also pioneered an entirely new range of expression for white women in the previously male-dominated world of post-Beatles rock. Raise your Hands http://youtube.com/watch?v=-rtE0K9PMoo 

Her body decoration with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast, by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, is taken as a seminal moment in the tattoo revolution and was an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, often including colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. News of her on 20/20 http://youtube.com/watch?v=xyTESUQWfV0 Good coverage.

The 1979 film The Rose was allegedly based on Joplin's life. Although some considered Bette Midler an odd choice for the lead role, Midler earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her performance. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening there in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim and packed houses and was held over several times, the demanding role of the singing Janis attracting rock vocalists from relative unknowns to pop stars Laura Branigan and Beth Hart. A national tour followed. Gospel According to Janis, a biographical film starring Zooey Deschanel as Joplin was scheduled to begin shooting in early 2007 but was postponed indefinitely.

Not recognized by her hometown during her life, she was remembered much later. In 1988, her life and achievements were showcased and recognized in Port Arthur, Texas by the dedication of the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original bronze, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark. 

Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.