Janis: Her Life and Music
George-Warren's deep research, eye for detail, illuminating contextualization, and clarity of delivery all make for a far more rounded and convincing image of Joplin's precocity in the heady decades of post-World War II America ... George-Warren traces this rise meticulously, citing contemporaneous interviews as well as fresh sources in order to paint Joplin's ascendance far more fully than has ever been accomplished before. And her riotous anecdotes splash color on the canvas ... [George-Warren's] knack for capturing conflicted subjects is uncanny; in Janis, she digs into Joplin's layered emotions, fluid sexuality, unshakably low self-esteem, and unquenchable urge to transcend her racist, restricted Port Arthur upbringing ... In encapsulating Joplin's dual nature so concisely, George-Warren delivers the definitive portrait of one of pop culture's most misunderstood martyrs. Joplin was both a product and an architect of her times; in dwelling so sympathetically on her tangle of talents, contradictions, and mythology, Janis brings one of rock's most enduring legends down to earth while holding her justly up to the light.
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... masterfully researched ... the significance-establishing project Joplin appreciators have been waiting for. Her life story unfolds in almost month-by-month narration, greatly assisted by the access George-Warren had to her diaries and letters ... Despite occasional over-density of detail, we get the full Janis.
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... sober and thorough, and it amounts to the last word on a brief candle of an existence, a life whose peaks and valleys make your average mountain range look as flat as an acre of Texas farmland ... Joplin took such joy in performing that she made it look effortless, but George-Warren reminds readers how hard she worked, not only doing take after take in the studio but also doing the kind of behind-the-scenes research associated more with musicologists than whiskey-swigging blues shouters.
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