Rodgersand Hart’s “Little Girl Blue” seems an unusual selection for Janis Joplin, yetshe made the song her own. Little Girl Blue is also the name of Amy Berg’sdocumentary on the singer and the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack showsJoplin’s.
Thesoundtrack covers the breadth of her career. Only one track, a live “Piece ofMy Heart,” was previously unreleased. Little Girl Blue presents a well-curatedoverview of its subject, pulling together selections that first appearedposthumously on box sets and expanded editions and juxtaposing them withfamiliar tracks.
Anearly live recording of Lead Belly’s “Careless Love” shows her firmly groundedin the blues, not just the mannerisms but the emotional heart. In a blindfoldtest, listeners might mistake her for a pre-World War II blueswoman with guitaralong the lines of Memphis Minnie. But her pre-war blues emersion was nocul-de-sac but the highway leading to new horizons. She was drawn to theear-splitting deep end of rock as singer for Big Brother and The HoldingCompany. The band sometimes came across as garage rock built on the blues, buteven on the relatively simple “Down on Me,” Joplin carries the performance overthe top with her fiercely expressive voice. Big Brother was underrated, asshown here with the spacious yet adamant groove of “Ball and Chain” and theBach-like electric guitar line created for “Summertime.” During her tenure withBig Brother, Joplin cemented her reputation as a blues-rock powerhouse, risingfrom low-key to a shriek in a heartbeat.
Unsatisfiedby blues-rock, Joplin left Big Brother for what proved to be a short solo careerfocused on emulating the rustic soulful electricity issuing from the Stax-Voltlabel. She was backed by the Kozmic Blues Band for I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic BluesAgain Mama! (1969) and the Full Tilt Boogie Band for Pearl (1971). Never aprolific songwriter, Joplin relied on contemporary material, often by AfricanAmericans such as Clarence Carter, Bobby Womack and Eddie Floyd.
Joplinwas one in a trio of rock stars (along with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison) whofell to heroin as the 1970s began. She died of an overdose in 1970. Her only numberone hit, climbing the charts after her death, was a country-soul rendition ofKris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” whose regretful tone stands at oddswith many of her earlier songs and raises intriguing questions about the artistshe might have become.