Janis Joplin BoxSet 5CD

Janis Joplin BoxSet 5CD

Ape+Cue

Janis Joplin was one of the most exhilarating performers of an era blessed with riveting stage artists, but all but her most emphatic champions must concede her recorded oeuvre is problematic. With Big Brother & the Holding Company she was surrounded by up-from-the-streets cohorts who were spiritually attuned to Joplin, even if they weren't always musically in tune. After one rushed, premature effort for the Mainstream label, Big Brother hit the top of the charts with one of the touchstones of the San Francisco sound, Cheap Thrills. Barraged by critics who believed Joplin's skills as a blues and soul singer were being squandered in a psychedelic setting, the toast of Haight-Ashbury went solo with the up-and-down I Got Them Ol' Kozmic Blues Again, Mama. Joplin was hitting her stride during the 1970 Pearl sessions when she died of a drug overdose at age 28. The album's posthumous release was a critical and commercial smash. Box of Pearls binds the 1999 remastered and expanded versions of the aforementioned albums and tosses in a five-track rarities EP entitled, appropriately enough, Rare Pearls. Much of Box of Pearls is brilliant while portions are badly dated, but it's all Joplin.

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. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying on-stage presence.

Joplin was raised in the small town of Port Arthur, TX, and much of her subsequent personal difficulties and unhappiness has been attributed to her inability to fit in with the expectations of the conservative community. She'd been singing blues and folk music since her teens, playing on occasion in the mid-'60s with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. There are a few live pre-Big Brother recordings (not issued until after her death), reflecting the inspiration of early blues singers like Bessie Smith, that demonstrate she was well on her way to developing a personal style before hooking up with the band. She had already been to California before moving there permanently in 1966, when she joined a struggling early San Francisco psychedelic group, Big Brother & the Holding Company. Although their loose, occasionally sloppy brand of bluesy psychedelia had some charm, there can be no doubt that Joplin -- who initially didn't even sing lead on all of the material -- was primarily responsible for lifting them out of the ranks of the ordinary. She made them a hit at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where her stunning version of "Ball and Chain" (perhaps her very best performance) was captured on film. After a debut on the Mainstream label, Big Brother signed a management deal with Albert Grossman and moved on to Columbia. Their second album, Cheap Thrills, topped the charts in 1968, but Joplin left the band shortly afterward, enticed by the prospects of stardom as a solo act.

Joplin's first album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, was recorded with the Kozmic Blues Band, a unit that included horns and retained just one of the musicians that had played with her in Big Brother (guitarist Sam Andrew). Although it was a hit, it wasn't her best work; the new band, though more polished musically, was not nearly as sympathetic accompanists as Big Brother, purveying a soul-rock groove that could sound forced. That's not to say it was totally unsuccessful, boasting one of her signature tunes in "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)."

For years, Joplin's life had been a roller coaster of drug addiction, alcoholism, and volatile personal relationships, documented in several biographies. Musically, however, things were on the upswing shortly before her death, as she assembled a better, more versatile backing outfit, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, for her final album, Pearl (ably produced by Paul Rothchild). Joplin was sometimes criticized for screeching at the expense of subtlety, but Pearl was solid evidence of her growth as a mature, diverse stylist who could handle blues, soul, and folk-rock. "Mercedes Benz," "Get It While You Can," and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" are some of her very best tracks. Tragically, she died before the album's release, overdosing on heroin in a Hollywood hotel in October 1970. "Me and Bobby McGee" became a posthumous number one single in 1971, and thus the song with which she is most frequently identified. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

DISC 1: BIG BROTHER & THE HOLDING COMPANY:

1. Bye, Bye Baby
2. Easy Rider
3. Intruder
4. Light Is Faster Than Sound
5. Call On Me
6. Women Is Losers
7. Blindman
8. Down On Me
9. Caterpillar
10. All Is Loneliness
11. Coo Coo - (single)
12. Last Time, The - (single)
13. Call On Me - (previously unreleased, alternate take)
14. Bye, Bye Baby - (previously unreleased, alternate take)

DISC 2: CHEAP THRILLS:

1. Combination Of The Two
2. I Need A Man To Love
3. Summertime
4. Piece Of My Heart
5. Turtle Blues
6. Oh, Sweet Mary
7. Ball And Chain
8. Roadblock - (previously unreleased, session outtake)
9. Flower In The Sun - (previously unreleased, session outtake)
10. Catch Me Daddy - (previously unreleased, live, live)
11. Magic Of Love - (previously unreleased, live, live)

DISC 3: I GOT DEM OL' KOZMIC BLUES AGAIN MAMA!:

1. Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)
2. Maybe
3. One Good Man
4. As Good As You've Been To This World
5. To Love Somebody
6. Kozmic Blues
7. Little Girl Blue
8. Work Me, Lord
9. Dear Landlord - (session outtake)
10. Summertime - (previously unreleased, live, Woodstock)
11. Piece Of My Heart - (previously unreleased, live, Woodstock)

DISC 4: PEARL:

1. Move Over
2. Cry Baby
3. Woman Left Lonely, A
4. Half Moon
5. Buried Alive In The Blues
6. My Baby
7. Me And Bobby McGee
8. Mercedes Benz
9. Trust Me
10. Get It While You Can
11. Tell Mama - (previously unreleased, live, live)
12. Little Girl Blue - (previously unreleased, live, live)
13. Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) - (previously unreleased, live, live)
14. Cry Baby - (previously unreleased, live, live)

DISC 5: RARE PEARLS:

1. It's A Deal - (previously unreleased, outtake)
2. Easy Once You Know How - (previously unreleased, outtake)
3. Maybe - (live, live)
4. Raise Your Hand - (previously unreleased, live, live)
5. Bo Diddley - (previously unreleased, live, live)


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