Holly George-Warren
Autor/a de The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century: Third Edition
Sobre l'autor
Holly George-Warren is a two-time Grammy nominee and the award-winning author of sixteen books, including A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton and Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry. She lives in upstate New York.
Obres de Holly George-Warren
The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century: Third Edition (2001) — Editor — 248 exemplars
The Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely New Reviews: Every Essential Album, Every Essential Artist (1992) — Editor — 221 exemplars
The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture (1999) — Editor — 167 exemplars
A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (2014) 70 exemplars
Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music (2006) 38 exemplars
Farm Aid. a Song for America. Featuring the Voices of Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews (2005) 2 exemplars
Physioynomy 1 exemplars
Obres associades
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Nom normalitzat
- George-Warren, Holly
- Data de naixement
- 1956-10-10
- Gènere
- female
- Nacionalitat
- USA
Membres
Ressenyes
Llistes
Premis
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 27
- També de
- 1
- Membres
- 1,916
- Popularitat
- #13,433
- Valoració
- 3.9
- Ressenyes
- 31
- ISBN
- 83
- Llengües
- 6
This is a sensitive and carefully researched look at Janis Joplin's short life, including her family, her childhood and education in a conservative oil industry town in 1950s Texas. I thought this part was really interesting. Joplin regarded her dad as a "secret intellectual" who liked to read and think about things, and who didn't share the conservative religious and political views of the society he had settled in. Her mum was more religious but was also a talented musician who started teaching her daughter to play and sing from an early age, and who had enjoyed nights out dancing on tables in her 20s.
Janis was a clever child and a very talented artist. As she grew up though, the life mapped out for even clever teenage girls and young women was restrictive and unappealing, and Janis began to rebel, though George-Warren outlines the contradictions - the stories about Janis Joplin at school and university were possibly more lurid than the reality. Importantly, she also explores Janis's influences and development as a singer/musician in Texas and California, as she came across Bessie Smith, blues, jazz and R&B and other black music, as well as rock and roll, folk and protest songs. Georgia-Warren mentions the racism of the society in which Joplin grew up and the challenge of her alternative influences, including her love for Bessie Smith. Going to college, though still in Texas, offered lots of opportunities to hear music and other cultural influences and hang out with an alternative "beatnik crowd" as much as formal education. Then Janis took a chance to stay with relatives and work in California, got into a mess with drugs and money problems, came back and tried taking a very conventional office job for a bit, before returning to 1960s San Francisco and finally becoming famous.
Throughout the book, the various phases of Janis Joplin's short life are explored through correspondence, older and more recent interviews with family and friends - she continued to write to her parents and much younger sister, Laura. The detailed endnotes also reference previous memoirs, including Myra Friedman (who was a friend and who worked with Janis Joplin) and Alice Echols, a feminist activist and writer. There are also a generous 32 pages of photographic plates, mostly black and white but with a few colour photos from Joplin's final, famous years - these include pictures of Janis Joplin through her life, of family, of her with a student band, and of her bandmates in Big Brother and the Kozmic Blues Band. There are also pictures of her with other friends and musicians.
This is an interesting read, though it makes me want to go back to the other Janis Joplin books, especially Alice Echols and one by little sister Laura Joplin with the letters Janis sent her.… (més)