Little Girl Blue: The Rise of Janis Joplin

-
By Shannon Stockwell 


Kacee Clanton as Janis Joplin in A Night with Janis Joplin.
Photo by Mark and Tracy Photography.
Singer Janis Joplin—the focus of A Night with Janis Joplin, opening at The Geary Theater on June 7—is often hailed as the first female sex symbol in rock and roll. She paved the way for female singers to break down barriers of sexism in the music industry. But before she became a feminist icon, her folksy, bluesy tone formed the soundtrack to the 1967 Summer of Love.

Joplin first heard of the San Francisco music scene while staying with her aunts in Los Angeles in 1962. But it wasn’t until music promoter Chet Helms passed through Texas and heard Joplin perform that she became determined to try her hand at singing professionally.

The music scene in 1963 San Francisco had not yet moved to the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury, which would have its heyday later; it was still largely in North Beach, which was populated by beat writers and folk musicians. Joplin performed at small gigs around the city and began to gain a fanbase.
 
After a brief return to Texas, Joplin returned to San Francisco and auditioned for a band: Big Brother and the Holding Company. The members of the band were blown away by her gritty, soulful voice. She was hired immediately, and within six days of arriving in San Francisco, she was performing with Big Brother.

With Big Brother, Joplin’s fame skyrocketed. The band played at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967 and was the only act to get an encore performance. By the end of 1967, it was making $2,500 a show, which was unheard of for a band that hadn’t yet released a full album. Cheap Thrills, featuring “Piece of My Heart” and “Summertime,” would be released in 1968.

A Night with Janis Joplin runs June 7–July 2. Click here to purchase tickets through our website. Want to learn more about Janis Joplin and the Summer of Love? Click here to purchase Words on Plays, A.C.T.'s in-depth performance guide series.

Popular posts from this blog

Worthy to Be Told: An Interview with Summer Brown

-
Image
By Claire L. Wong and Alejandra Maria Rivas Summer Brown comes from a loud family in Richmond, Virginia. “Growing up the youngest of four, it made me a big observer in how people operate,” says Brown. “My family members were definitely my first scene studies.” Brown is a third-year student in A.C.T.’s MFA Program and is nearing graduation. While studying theater at University of Maryland, College Park, one of her professors told her about A.C.T.’s Summer Training Congress, which she completed the summer before her senior year. “I remember during that summer was the first time that I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, I’m gonna be an actor.’” Since she had decided to purse acting as a career, Brown auditioned for graduate schools, and came to A.C.T. after undergrad. Summer Brown. Photo by Deborah Lopez. What has your last year in the Program been like? Starting this third year with  Top Girls  [A.C.T.’s season opener at the Geary Theater], I was figuring out what it is to be in
Read more

Cool versus Fool—Criticisms of Louis Armstrong

-
Image
By Shannon Stockwell In the beginning of his career, Louis Armstrong successfully walked the thin line between art and entertainment. His jazz recordings with the Hot Five were regarded as some of the most influential in music history, but at the same time, the records contained enough of his comedy and his distinctive singing to attract those who weren’t jazz aficionados. By the end of the 1930s, however, it was clear that Armstrong’s music was decidedly pop oriented. As he grew more popular with mainstream audiences, jazz scholars turned up their noses at him. Among these purists, the consent was that Armstrong didn’t have the same technical proficiency that he once did, his repertoire was stale, and he gave up musicality for mainstream entertainment value.             Around the 1940s, young black jazz musicians who had once admired Armstrong found themselves with similar criticisms, but they believed Armstrong had sold out in another way. They believed he had sold
Read more

A Hell of a Businessman: A Biography of Joe Glaser

-
By Simon Hodgson Born in 1897, Joe Glaser was the son of a successful Russian Jewish physician in Chicago. He originally intended to follow a similar career and entered medical school, but after passing out in the operating room, he realized he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. He started off in business selling used cars, but found better luck managing prizefighters. In his biography of Al Capone, Laurence Bergreen notes, “Glaser’s power to fix fights earned him a reputation as a sage of boxing, especially among reporters.” With advanced word as to which fights were fixed, Glaser could predict the results—and even the number of rounds—of many bouts in Chicago. His connections with organized crime continued in his next career change, when he began running nightclubs and whorehouses in the South Side for the Chicago Outfit, the powerful underworld gang led by Capone. Glaser’s tendency toward illegal action nearly ended his career. In 1928, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for
Read more