Janis Joplin: Pearl of Rock and Roll

Janis Joplin’s voice brought her fame and money while she was still alive, and a posthumous record “Pearl” could have earned her a million-dollar income in just one year—so huge were the sales. She was bestowed the title of a blues legend, and crowds of fans even to this day travel to Port Arthur to honor the singer.

But in her hometown, Janis was never especially liked: at school she was an outsider, and after her death her house was literally destroyed.

All her life, Janis wanted to prove to her parents and to herself that she wasn’t empty, that she was worth something, that she could be loved.

And she never wanted to be like everyone else or bend under someone’s pressure.

And it is in these painful teenage wounds that lies the main tragedy of the great star’s life: Janis tried to find herself, to understand who she was—but again and again she fell into a bottomless pit of alcohol, casual sex, and drugs.

At 27, she recorded a new album—she was in love and happy. It seemed that life had finally been kind to her—but everything was cut short by a sudden death from an overdose in a roadside hotel.

Both Janis Joplin’s life and death are surrounded by many rumors. What was she really like? Did she commit all those reckless antics that newspapers and acquaintances claimed? Was her death an accident? Or was it murder by the hands of her former lover? Or suicide?

Biographer Ellis Amburn visited Janis’s homeland and the places where she performed, spoke with her family, friends, classmates, and musicians in order to separate truth from speculation.

Today, this book is perhaps the most objective and comprehensive study of the life of the incomparable “pearl” and the greatest blues vocalist of all time.