Janis Lyn Joplin was a courageous person who stood up for what she believed in. She may not have always made the right choices, but she never seemed to care too much about getting in trouble. Despite her crazy ways, she worked hard to build her career as a singer.

Janis was born on January 19, 1943 at 9:30 am. She was born in Port Arthur, Texas. Her parents were Seth Joplin and Dorothy East Joplin. Janis+s parents gave birth to another daughter six years later, in 1949. Her name was Laura. Four years after Laura, in 1955, their last child, Michael, was born. Their family home was located in Port Arthur, Texas. When Janis got older she moved away many times, yet she still kept in touch with her family. At first they weren+t very supportive of her decisions, but soon they let her go.

When Janis Joplin was younger she was described by her mother as having |a full face, small, twinkling blue eyes, and a broad forehead showing her intellect.X She also had |fine, silky blonde hair that had a soft curl in it.X Her mother liked to dress Janis and Laura in matching dresses that she would make herself. They usually dressed like that when company came. When Janis was starting high school she |wore lots of makeup, straight skirts with white shirts, bobby sox and loafers.X Janis liked to put a little curl in her hair. By 10th grade she was still undeveloped and very embarrassed about that. Things like that were very important to Janis, she cared a lot about her physical appearance in high school. She finally started to develop the summer between 10th and 11th grade. Towards the end of high school Janis changed. She liked to be different now. Her mother made her, and bout her new clothes to help her fit in, but she refused to wear them. Her school didn+t accept girls in pants, so Janis wore skirts just above her knees with black or purple leotards. While she was a student at the University of Texas she was nominated for |Ugly Man on CampusX for her school paper. Janis didn+t win, but she did get votes. She was completely devastated by her nomination. Once she was into the music business she wore her hair down long and crazy. Janis liked to dress looser. She wore hippie clothes with lots of beads, feathery hats, and round sun glasses.

Janis Joplin was not a very good student in school. In elementary school she received comments such as |making acceptable progressX , |commendableX and |needs improvement.X In Junior high she was becoming more of a problem. Teachers constantly said that Janis talked too much and didn+t get all her work done on time. In 9th grade she received a journalism award. In high school she wrote and illustrated The Driftwood+ which was the school newspaper. In the beginning of high school she started to turn things around. She was a very good student, but still had bad behavior. She decided she wanted to be a painter, Janis was very talented in art. Her mother made her do something the summer between her junior and senior year. She enrolled for summer courses at Port Arthur Business College. She only lasted one month. When Janis was 17 she went with her friends to college. They all enrolled at Lamar State College of Technology. She had planned to major in art. Janis left after the fall semester because she felt it |didn+t suit her artistic needs.X She enrolled in Port Arthur College to study typing, keypad, etc. She did it so she would have the minimum required to get a job. She had been able to get a job as a keypunch operator at a telephone company in LA. She had moved from Port Arthur to LA to Venice, and then she moved back home. She enrolled at Lamar again and lived at home. She had later learned about the Austin art scene and transferred to the University of Texas. After a while she moved back to Port Arthur again and took classes in math, industrial science, physical science, United States history, and sociology of marriage. She had begun to take things seriously.

Janis Joplin was not a very athletic person. The only reference to a sport in this book is that she graduated from the Arthur Murray dance class in 9th grade. It does not say how long she danced for.

Janis was very talented. She showed drawing capabilities at a young age. Her mother set up private art lessons with the best teacher in town. Janis loved to draw. She also sang a lot with her family. She had learned how to sew from her mother, too. Janis joined Glee Club in her junior high and in 9th grade she sang a solo for the Christmas pageant. That was her first public singing experience beyond the church. The summer of 1957 she worked drawing and painting posters for a local library+s bulletin boards. After 9th grade Janis joined a summer program at the Port Arthur Little Theater. She mostly painted the scenery, though she did have one small role in |Sunday Costs Five Pesos.X She grew a love for art and was becoming more and more talented with everything she did. When she was a senior she won a football poster contest using tiger skin. She also won an honorable mention in Captain Kangaroo+s Play-Doh modeling contest. She made a model of the digestive system. Janis realized she could sing while driving around in a car with her Little Theater friends. They were all singing in the car and when she had gotten home she called one of them up and said, |Guess what? I can sing.X He replied, |Oh really? What else is new?X And that began her singing career. She started o sing at local bars. One called The Sage+ allowed her to display some of her artwork and she even sold some. Janis had planned to major in art in college. Once she moved to Venice she started singing a lot more at various places. She had begun to focus more on singing than art. Janis and two friends, Powell St. John and Lanny Wiggins, sang in a talent show held by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department. They won first place. The three of them made a band and named in |The Waller Creek Boys.X They eventually changed it so Janis would be seen in a more feminine way. They made it |The Waller Creek Boys, featuring Janis Joplin.X They started singing weekly at the school sponsored hootenannies. After being with the |Waller Creek BoysX for a while, she got offered to join a band called |Big Brother and the Holding Company.X The band included James Gurley, Peter Albin, Dave Getz, and Sam Andrew. They were fairly successful. She stayed with |Big BrotherX for four years, but then she left and went out to make a solo career for herself.

Janis Joplin has been a very social person most of her life. When she was very young, growing up in Port Arthur, she played with the local group of kids. She maintained a proper social standing in junior high, too. She had joined a few clubs, including the Junior Reading Circle for Culture, the Glee Club, and a journalism club called Tri Hi Y. Her best friend throughout junior high and high school was Karleen Bennett. She had met many friends when she joined the Little Theater program. They didn+t believe in doing anything good. She remained friends with them until she was into college. In 1958 she joined a club called Future Teachers of America. She fell in with the biker crowd in her early high school years. In 10th grade she joined the yearbook staff with people from the Little Theater group. Many people in high school considered her an outcast. Janis believed in things others didn+t. She became very rebellious. She liked to do crazy things with the Little Theater group. They climbed water towers, would just drive around and drink and talk for hours, and many other things. Janis was also never big on dating. Though she did have many boyfriends, she refused to change herself for a guy and would never let him run her life. She liked listening to old black blues singers. She was very interested in radio and hung out at the station a lot with Karleen. Janis had begun coming home later, studying less, and she often displayed her knowledge of vulgar words. Janis had moved many times when she was in college. She moved to LA, Venice, San Francisco, Austin, back home, and many other places.

Janis Joplin had many goals growing up. Most of which had to do with art. She was lucky enough to reach some of her goals. For a very long time she wanted to be an artist. Janis displayed her projects anywhere possible and got many awards and much recognition for them. Not until she was in college did she realize that her real passion was music. She made it. Janis became an extremely successful singer.

Janis+s morals declined as she got older, but she started out well. Her whole life she was against the segregation of blacks. She was also very religious as a child. When she started high school her morals began to change. Janis turned away from the life of a |proper young ladyX and began to do what she thought was right. Her Little Theater friends helped her see that |If good people aren+t all good, then perhaps the supposedly bad people aren+t all bad.X Alcohol had begun to enter Janis+s social scene her junior year. When she was a senior her parents had sent her to a counselor to help her get over her social anger. Marijuana had also started to become popular in high school. Janis never listened to her parents and did whatever she pleased. Once when she had gone with Karleen to Houston to visit a friend, Karleen left her at a cheap hotel to stay the night. Janis found out in was a whore house, yet she stayed and worked willingly. In college she would often cut class to drink. She had also done crazy things like stripping for the boys dorm through the windows. Everyone drank then until they ran out, there were no limits. When Janis had moved to Venice it was one of the centers of the drug world. The more Janis got involved with music and the art scene, the worse things got. She started drinking all the time, and there was rarely a time when she wasn+t drunk. She experimented with many more drugs and really put her life in danger. On October 4, 1970 Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose.