By 1970 Janis Joplin was a woman with a very divided reality. On the one hand, she had found happiness and stability in the new band she had started, the Full Tilt Boogie Band.
On the other hand, emotionally, her life was constant twists and turns that affected his state of mind. If she had managed to quit heroin at a certain point in her life, let’s say secretly from many of her close people, she returned to them as a form of recreation and sometimes comfort. Today we will see through her music the value of a work that was unfortunately truncated by the double game played by this very talented singer from Texas.
Get It While You Can
‘Get It While You Can’ was the last song that Janis Joplin recorded. It was written by the team of songwriters Jerry Ragovoy and Mort Shuman and originally recorded by soul singer Howard Tate. The song was the title track of Tate’s debut album, which was produced by Ragovoy. His version reached # 134 in the United States, and Tate struggled with the chitlin circuit before giving up on music in the mid-1970s.
Cry Baby
A cover of Cry Baby by the soul singer Garnett Mimms is yet another petard of the album, perhaps the most impactful and with the most explosive and ripped vocals. In one of her three versions, Janis improvises a dismissive response to boyfriend David Niehaus, who left her to backpack for Turkey and Nepal.
It is almost a famous song, it was in the repertoire of the 70’s tour. Except that the version made in Toronto stands out, even for the performance of Tilt, in this presentation, you can feel the perfect harmony of the musicians with Janis.
Half Moon
This celestial song has an interesting point, this album was able to positively favor the career of several musicians and composers, like the example of Half Moon. It was written by John Hall and his first wife, former Johanna Schier. At the time, John was a hardworking musician and Johanna was a writer for The Village Voice. Johanna received an interview with Joplin, who suggested that the couple write a song for her. John was working on music for a piece called Line of Least Existence and created a “funky, repetitive Hendrix-inspired guitar lick” for one of the tracks. After Johanna wrote the lyrics, he reworked this track to fit the song and brought it to Joplin, who loved it.