As an overweight teenager, she was a folk-music … Janis Lyn Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the oil-refining town of Port Arthur, Texas, near the border with Louisiana. Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer, songwriter, and music arranger, from Port Arthur, Texas. She grew up listening to blues musicians such as Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Big Mama Thornton and singing in the local choir. In the 1960s, Janis Joplin was an icon of the counterculture, a female rock star at a time when rock was an all-boys' club. The daughter of Seth Joplin, a worker of Texaco, she had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. Born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin developed a love of music at an early age, but her career didn't take off until she joined the band Big Brother …
She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist.
Janis Joplin, (born January 19, 1943, Port Arthur, Texas, U.S.—died October 4, 1970, Los Angeles, California), American singer, the premier white female blues vocalist of the 1960s, who dazzled listeners with her fierce and uninhibited musical style. Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger The greatest white female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. "At that point in time there weren't too … Her father was a cannery worker and her mother was a registrar for a business college. Joplin was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas.