Little Girl Blue Janis

Janis Joplin is one of the most revered and iconic of all rock & roll singers, a tragic and misunderstood figure who thrilled millions of listeners and blazed new creative trails before her death in 1970 at age 27…

Superb collection of Janis' best broadcasts. After splitting from Big Brother, Joplin formed new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues bands of the 60s. By early 69, Janis was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day. The Kozmic Blues Band performed on several American television shows with Joplin. On the Tom Jones show, they performed Little Girl Blue and Raise Your Hand, the latter with Jones singing a duet with Joplin. On one episode of The Dick Cavett Show, they performed Try (Just a Little Bit Harder) as well as To Love Somebody.

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.

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)…

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…