by Laura Joplin
But don’t think it’s throwing me, it couldn’t. Come to think about it, this is a lot like your letter. I guess we’ve both managed to plow through a lot of shit. Well listen, it’s been enough to make me nothing short of fanatically determined to have it right once and that’s what we’re doing, right?
I love you, Peter, I wish we could be together. I want to be happy so fucking bad. I love you. XXX J
Sex came up in her discussions with Giarratano, but he explained it was never the central issue for Janis. Her problems were philosophical and cultural. Marriage was important only as part of the ideal she strived to mold her life into. She wanted more from life than she had found, and she didn’t know where to get it.
Janis became studious and responsible. “Her life as a nun,” Jack Smith joked. Gloria said she looked good. Janis’s complexion had cleared up. She was more carefully groomed and wore makeup. She put her hair up in rollers and dressed to fit in as much as she could. At social gatherings she told her friends, “Don’t drink too much,” and “Watch your language.”
A modern-day Samson, Janis took the most visible sign of her freedom, her wild loose hair, and bound it tightly to her head. When she was home, she and I spent hours in our bedroom experimenting with ways to braid our long tresses in different styles of twists and knots. She settled on using a hair form, carefully pulling her fine brown hair through the doughnut and tucking it underneath. Sometimes she let it hang loose with soft waves around her face.
Janis’s new look wasn’t only a sign of forgoing the wildness of other days. She was evoking classical female beauty, which depended on the lines of her face and the look in her eye. Nightly, she undid the bun and brushed her hair. Standing at the mirror, she shared her image of what her life would be like in the future. Janis would have longer hair and never, ever cut it. Pop often told us that men loved women with long hair because they liked to watch them brush it. When she was old, Janis planned to wear her hair beautifully braided and pinned around her head. Each evening when it was past the social hour, she and her husband would retire to their quarters. Sitting at her dressing table in a long, silky robe, she would slowly and methodically take the pins from her hair and let it fall down. Only her husband would ever get to see. Each evening, for him, she would brush it one hundred strokes. As Janis told me her story, I knew that she wasn’t brushing hair but fingering the pearls in her treasure chest of dreams.
We were the same size, so we traded clothes. We talked a lot about fashion and our bodies and what looked good on our build. We both liked straight skirts or dresses with simple belts or sweaters dyed to match. We talked about hose and shoes to set them off. Weejun loafers were in then, but Janis favored simple pumps with only a slight heel. We both liked the string of Venetian glass beads that Mother bought us, so we had to barter a lot about whose turn it was to wear them.
Janis and Patti talked often about life and death: “Is there a God or not?” They moved beyond that ultimate question to its everyday counterpart: “What, then, is a human?” People weren’t just egos with human parents and quirky personalities. People were embodied souls on unknown quests.
There was a wistfulness that crept into Janis now and then. She wrote and taught me a song, “Come Away with Me.” Later she laughed. “Sing it all you want to, Laura, but don’t tell anyone I wrote that.” It was too idealistic for the cynical Janis image.
Come away with me
And we’ll build a dream
Things will seem
Like they never seemed
They could be
VERSE 1:
The grass will be green
The trees will be tall
(forgotten stanzas)
VERSE 2:
(forgotten stanzas)
There’ll be no hunger no sorrow at all
No one will cry alone in their sleep
There’ll be no loneliness hidden down deep, inside
VERSE 3:
Just like the Pied Piper
I’ll walk through the streets
Gathering all the happy people I meet
We’ll all join hands and
Fly through the sky
Leaving our troubles
Here to die, all alone
Janis continued her lengthy discussions about life and possibilities with her friends. “Janis and I were talking with Jim Langdon,” related Jack Smith. “Jim saw life in terms of a box, with limited aspirations. Janis and I saw it more as an open-ended triangle, where the sides went on forever. There were some things you couldn’t do, like be born and raised in China. Otherwise, there were limitless aspirations.” Sometimes, with Jack especially, Janis let herself echo the sentiments of that ninth-grade girl who read Ivanhoe and talked of princesses and knights in armor.
Amidst dreaming of romance and the therapeutic review of her life, Janis returned to singing on stage. Performing seemed to court her in its own seductive fashion. She visited various local folk music clubs, connecting with musicians, getting together to play, and inevitably being offered a performing spot. She turned down an offer to move to Houston and sing, preferring to go with the opportunities of a weekend gig, benefit or such. Her letters described, “I went and sang last night at that place in Beaumont. It was really nice—they have an old blind man named Patty Green playing piano. I might work there this weekend, but I doubt it. But the big news if I do is that I may sing a few ballads and back myself. I’ve gotten quite a bit better on the guitar and can actually do an adequate job of playing now. I’ve been learning some new ballads from Laura and some of her books. You liked that kind of singing, so I’m going to be able to do it. And I can now. I’ve been playing all day and it’s really nice. But it scares me much more than blues.” Of the same situation she said, “It might evolve into a weekend gig, too. But it’s funny, I’m not all that ambitious anymore. But I’d still like to do it. So, we’ll see.”
Over the Thanksgiving holiday she had a gig at the Half Way House in Beaumont. Jim Langdon was then writing a column reviewing music in the Austin American-Statesman, “Jim Langdon’s Nightbeat.” His column covered Janis’s performance.
But while it is fresh in my mind, I would prefer to talk about a rare experience I had over the weekend.
That experience took place down in Beaumont, where I had the opportunity to hear a young lady whom I consider to be the best blues singer in the country.
Her name is JANIS JOPLIN, and she is a former Austin resident. Her home is Port Arthur, but she has run a course from Austin to San Francisco to New York and back, before returning home, still relatively unknown as a singer.
This is a condition that I hope will soon change, for her talent is as great, in my opinion, as anyone in the folk field today.
I heard her sing over the weekend in a coffee house-type club in Beaumont called the Half Way House. It was the first time she has performed before the public in quite some time, but her weekend showing there was enough to land her a future engagement in a Houston coffee house in December.
When I entered the club she was singing her own lyrics to a “Cocaine Blues” with a knowledge born of pain, suffering, and the scars of experience. . . .
So she went home and decided to start all over again.
Starting all over again at that stage meant not singing, so she didn’t sing. But now she’s bringing it all back.
She plays a little guitar—just enough to accompany herself—and she is still reluctant to seek out engagements, but it’s all coming back.
From her coast-to-coast odyssey remains [sic] many marks, some of which cannot be erased. But those same marks have embodied themselves in her interpretation of the blues, and in that context, I hope they remain forever.
Texas has been a hard place for a good many blues singers, from Leadbelly on, but because of this, it has produced some great ones.
In my mind, Janis Joplin is one of the great ones.
Even Janis’s social life was becoming traditional. That winter she de
cided to have a party at the house. She desperately wanted Peter to come down for the occasion, but he said events forced him to postpone his visit. Mom even sprang for some shrimp to boil for hors d’oeuvres along with other tidbits Janis artistically displayed around the room. On Saturday night, Janis entertained her local group of married friends, interesting newcomers, and some of her professors. It was a successful gathering of people who liked to talk. It was an adult gathering. It was people getting together without drug abuse. Janis was very pleased. So were the folks because they enjoyed her friends. Gloria was impressed that anyone would have a party at her parents’ house!
Time was closing in on Christmas. Peter had promised to come down for the holidays and bring her an engagement ring. Whether he ever intended to is unknown, but the plan was called off long before the date. Janis spent part of the Christmas holidays in Austin with Jim and Rae Langdon at their hillside home full of young children. The group decorated for the holidays, trimming the tree and then turning on the holiday lights in their darkened house. Then everyone sat around the tree as Janis played the guitar and sang Christmas songs.
For her part, Janis seemed to be seeing the relationship with a more balanced eye. She was losing faith in Peter’s ability to follow through and realize the dreams decorating their discussions. In early September, Peter was telling Janis he was in the hospital with undetermined problems, possibly having to do with his spleen. He was out of the hospital in two weeks and then returned in mid-October. He spoke of having potential liver problems and having a biopsy. He talked about inheriting money that was currently being held by an uncle and then spoke of being unable to pay the medical bills. He grieved with Janis about having to face up to a heavy family responsibility having to do with taking care of his mother and younger siblings. Peter told Janis he was taking tranquilizers and seeing a psychiatrist who wouldn’t allow their marriage at the moment. Peter also fretted over the decision to invest $10,000 in a company that made skateboards. Janis wrote “It’s even getting hard for me to believe and understand you! I’m sorry.. . . .I love you, you know.”
Throughout this period Peter had been living with Debbie, a woman he initially introduced as his cousin. Alice Echols quoted Debbie in her book Scars from Sweet Paradise. Debbie explained that she lived in New York with Peter, who had a job working as an engineer for IBM. When Janis telephoned, it was Debbie who answered; and Debbie who went along with the ruse that she was merely Peter’s cousin and roommate. The letters Janis so faithfully mailed everyday along with packages of cookies were picked up at the mailbox by Debbie. When writing Peter about his insufficient correspondence, Janis relayed that Debbie “said weakly, that you hadn’t had any stationery.” For months Peter telephoned and wrote to Janis, with sufficient ardor and promptness to keep alive her belief in him. Over time, though, Janis knew.
In November, Janis wrote to him thanking him for sending a dozen long-stemmed roses. She confided about a new frame of mind for her, based on her self-awareness of her degree of anxiety. “You know that I’ve been fairly adamant about my determination not to get fucked up again. Well it seems now to have developed into a rather neurotic tenor. I never relax anymore.. . . .I seem to be really mortally afraid that things won’t go right somehow and I’ll end up back in that hellish jungle that I’m obsessed with.. . . .The reason I went to that counselor is because I had suddenly realized that I was building my stability and progress on sheer terror and that won’t work! It’s too precarious. I sit in classes and never do anything wrong but it’s just because I’m so horrible afraid. I keep talking about “one step back” being the end of me and everything. And, from my new slightly objective vantage point, induced by Librium and a few days easy breathing I think I was maybe a little disproportionately afraid of you too. You see, I was really sure that you were finding yourself unable to cope w/things and that I couldn’t trust you, that is put my trust in you. Do you see?. . . .So anyway, this is it—I’m much calmer now. No longer terrified when I talk to people and I’m going to try and get this irrational fear under control.”
This November 11 letter was the last letter included in a batch of seventy. Probably there were more letters, as later correspondence from 1966 from Peter shows the two kept in touch. Possibly November is the time Peter and Janis talked more honestly and realistically about the possibility of their marriage. However it happened, the ardor of the relationship cooled. Janis quit sewing her wedding quilt and mailing off packages of homemade cookies. She continued to live with the family. More importantly, she retained her commitment to the dream of a healthy life in the “real world,” seeking a more genuine basis for happiness than an unreliable fiancé.
It is tempting to color Peter with a dark and angry brush, lashing out at the lies and elaborate deceptions he played on Janis and our family. It is also tempting to blame Janis for her willingness—eagerness—to be taken in by situations that her letters showed raised doubts within her. But she was in love, and love isn’t about making sense. When they looked at each other, they didn’t just see a sickened addict, they saw a whole human being. They gave each other momentous gifts. Janis had checked Peter into detox in San Francisco and stuck by him through it all. In some ways, he owed her his current sanity. In return, Peter provided Janis the cover she needed to be willing to go home. The fantasy of the romance helped Janis commit to staying with her family, working on her life with a counselor and dreaming of a healthy future. Perhaps Peter redeemed himself by this alone. He was just real enough to encourage Janis to do the work of saving herself.
Still, Janis grieved over the ending of her engagement to Peter. She had opened her heart to the fullest extent she knew how and now felt lost and burned. She openly acknowledged that Peter was the only man she had ever tried to get. He had first publicly honored her and then betrayed her. Peter gave her the joy of feeling incredibly loved. He also left her with a continuing fear of being deceived. The two feelings would fight to control her future behavior, ghosts haunting her ability to trust a man. For now, she was on her own with nothing to build her life around. School and being clean were things she was doing “in order to.” They weren’t ends in themselves. She needed to find something that was for her. She drifted without an emotional rudder, staying the course of school, hoping a safe harbor would emerge.
That Christmas Janis took up a paintbrush again as a favor for Mother, producing a nativity mural to put on the front porch. Grouped in a family portrait, her plywood Joseph, Mary, and Jesus graced our house that year. Janis impressed Michael, ten years her junior, with how easily she painted something so beautiful, elegant, and loving. She drew with deliberate, fluid strokes and chose warm, earthy colors to set off the figures.
The next semester Janis studied math, industrial sociology, physical science, United States history, and the sociology of marriage. Free of the betrothal, Janis began an active sex life. She saw a sociology major at Lamar. She told us stories of walking in on him early in the morning and finding him asleep in bed, such a skinny guy that his body looked no larger than a wrinkle in the quilt. Her attentions also turned to women, with one lover writing her after she had left Texas, calling her a “filch” for leaving. She confided she was able to forget Janis during the daytime but found that her sexual fantasies would arise in the evening and dog her previous content.
Janis went to Houston and Austin occasionally. She visited Patti and Dave McQueen in Houston. She jammed with the earthy Texas songwriter, Guy Clark, belting out, “Bring it on down to my house, daddy, there ain’t nobody home but me.” She played a few gigs at an R&B club on West Alabama called Sand Mountain. She may have played at the Jester, though Patti thinks she was rebuffed by the manager. Her Houston appearances netted little local attention, though she enjoyed them immensely.
Janis wrote to Jim Langdon in Austin and asked for help in getting some bookings. Jim was still relating to her as a mentor. He turned Janis on to new singers she needed to hear and introduced her to people she needed
to know. His friendship enabled Janis to retain some involvement in the music world without jeopardizing her serious student resolve.
The weekend of March 5–6, Janis played at the 11th Door in Austin. Half of the crowd was crazy about her, and the other half didn’t know what to think. They were bewildered, since Janis wasn’t at all like the Joan Baez clone they had come expecting to hear.
On March 13, 1966, Janis played a benefit for Teodar Jackson, a penniless blind fiddler who was quite ill. Jim Langdon was the emcee for the event and reviewed it for his column in the Austin American-Statesman.
The concert staged at the Methodist Student Center before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 featured perhaps the finest package of blues talent ever assembled under any one roof in Austin. It would be practically impossible to single out any one performer over any other—all were in such rare form.
On the bill were Allan Dameron, Kenneth Threadgill, Mike Allen, Tary Owens with Powell St. John, Mance Lipscomb, Robert Shaw, Roky and the 13th Floor Elevators, and Janis. Jim wrote,
But the most exciting portion of the program may well have been created late in the second half of the show by Port Arthur blues singer JANIS JOPLIN—the only female performer on the bill—who literally electrified her audience with her powerful, soul-searching blues presentation.
After opening with the grim and gutty “Codine,” Miss Joplin changed over to her “soft voice” and a delicate treatment of “I Ain’t Got a Worry” which produced an almost spellbinding effect.