Janis Joplin

Not to state the obvious, but the reality is that The Pearl Sessions by Janis Joplin is primarily for completists and musical historians. That's fine; given its design and contents it appears it was meant to be. The two-disc package includes the original album and mono 45 masters of six of its tracks - including "Me & Bobby McGee," "Move Over," and "Get It While You Can." These are interesting, but they don't hold a candle to the stereo album mixes. It's the second disc that holds the fan treasures. The studio banter by Joplin, producer Paul A Rothchild, and the Full-Tilt Boogie Band is priceless. It offers proof of Joplin's exacting standards when it came to getting across the maximum emotional impact of a song, as well as her vulnerability - asking for guidance from Rothchild as to how to approach a particular take (he hands control right back to her)…

Whether it was singing with Big Brother And The Holding Company or with her Full Tilt Boogie Band, Janis Joplin had one of the most identifiable, most emotional and most soulful voices ever recorded. Coming to San Francisco from Texas in 1966, Janis soon had the music world’s total attention, simply blowing the audience away at Monterey in 1967 while fronting Big Brother and gaining a record deal with Columbia Records in the process. After that, it was hit after hit with songs like her signature Piece Of My Heart, Cry Baby, and her Number One take of Kris Kristofferson’s present day standard Me And Bobby McGee, all included here. Through it all, Janis Joplin established herself as one of the very best and one of the most important singers and song interpreters ever to hit the music scene.

Pearl was Janis Joplin's valedictory. It was also her masterpiece. Originally released posthumously in 1971, Pearl encapsulates Janis’s greatness. The first female superstar of the modern rock era, Janis was not only a powerhouse performer of rock and blues but also showed an innate affinity for soul, country-inflected folk and even the Great American Songbook.
This new, two-disc edition of Pearl includes nine previously unreleased selections. Disc One’s bonus tracks include the touching tribute "Pearl" composed by Full Tilt Boogie, while Disc Two chronicles Janis’s 1970 trans-Canada Festival Express tour, and is sequenced to recreate one of the spellbinding shows from that summer…

Sony Legacy re-released four classic Janis Joplin LPs originally on Columbia – Big Brother & the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, and Pearl – as a four-disc set available on 180-gram vinyl. The cover art was re-created from the original LP jackets.

Recorded live in San Francisco on April 12 and April 13, 1968, this set is a snapshot of the band - with fine sound - reaching the peak of their form. All of the well-known songs from their first two albums are present: "Ball and Chain," "Down on Me," "Piece of My Heart," "Summertime," "Combination of the Two," and "Light Is Faster Than Sound," for starters. A treat for fans to hear, with a 24-page booklet that has lots of comments from the band.

18 Essential Songs is a one-disc distillation of the triple-disc Janis box set. Running 70 minutes, it is a more extensive best-of than the ten-track 1973 Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits album.

Columbia has managed to squeeze an impressive, perhaps excessive, number of compilations out of Janis Joplin's relatively slim body of recordings. With this two-CD set, The Essential Janis Joplin, the label's at it again, though it's a good one to get if you don't want to collect all the Joplin releases, and certainly don't want to get the expensive Joplin boxes, but want more than what fits onto a single disc. Including both solo recordings and highlights of her stint with Big Brother & the Holding Company, it has all the songs fans and critics would consider milestones in her career: "Ball and Chain" (a version recorded live in 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival, not the more familiar one from Cheap Thrills), "Piece of My Heart," "Down on Me," "Summertime," "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)," "Tell Mama" (the live 1970 performance from the expanded edition of Pearl)…

About half of this two-record set features Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company in 1968, performing songs like "Down on Me" and "Piece of My Heart." The rest, recorded in 1970, finds her with her backup group, Full Tilt Boogie, mostly performing songs from I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Joplin puts herself out on-stage, both in terms of singing until her voice is raw and describing her life to her audiences. Parts of this album are moving, parts are heartbreaking, and the rest is just great rock & roll.

In 1975 Columbia Records released this double disc, which held both treasures and frustration for the fans of Janis Joplin. The treasures were the glimpses of her live work with the Kozmic Blues Band plus a bonus LP containing 17 previously unreleased folk tracks entitled "Early Performances." The frustration lies in the big lie. In the world before DVD combined the film and the CD soundtrack, someone at Columbia had the audacity to substitute previously released material to replace some of the live performances that appeared on the film - most notably "Cry Baby" and "Piece of My Heart." It is noted on the label, but is not the kind of thing fans of soundtracks expect to see after they purchase the LP. Think anyone had the intuitive courage to take the live performance of "Mercedez Benz" from the Wicked Woman bootleg of her last show with Full Tilt Boogie from Harvard University Stadium for this set…