Move Over: Janis Joplin’s Best Tunes Came Last
Janis Joplin’s career was incredibly short. Just four years, four albums, and a handful of performances that changed what a female rock singer could sound like.
Her voice was raw, raspy and completely unmistakable, but there’s more to Janis than simply singing loudly. What made her special was the way she interpreted songs.
She could take a song written by somebody else and completely inhabit it.
That’s why so many of her recordings have become standards for working bands — and why, as a guitarist, learning a Janis Joplin song isn’t just about learning the chords. You have to understand what the singer is doing and build your part around it.
Big Brother and the Holding Company
In 1967, Janis was the lead singer of Big Brother & The Holding Company.
Their breakthrough came at the Monterey Pop Festival, where Janis’s performance attracted a huge amount of attention.
Columbia Records subsequently acquired the rights to their debut album from Mainstream Records and relaunched it with a new cover featuring Janis’s name prominently.
The label had clearly recognised what everyone else was beginning to notice: Janis was the star.
The album produced a minor hit with Down On Me, but commercially it wasn’t a huge success. The follow-up would be very different.
Cheap Thrills
Cheap Thrills arrived in 1968 and became the defining Big Brother & The Holding Company album.
Technically, it’s a studio album, although fake crowd noise was added to give parts of it the atmosphere of a live recording. And it contains two of Janis’s most important recordings:
Summertime and Piece of My Heart.
Both songs were already well established before Janis got hold of them.
That’s important, because Janis’s great talent wasn’t necessarily in writing songs. It was in taking existing material and turning it into something that sounded as though it had been written specifically for her.
Piece of My Heart
Piece of My Heart is probably the best example. The tune was first recorded in 1967 by Erma Franklin, Aretha Franklin’s older sister. Janis recorded it with Big Brother the following year, and her version became a rock classic.
There’s also an interesting Dusty Springfield connection.
Dusty recorded her own version in 1968, slightly changing the title to Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.
So you have three fascinating interpretations of essentially the same song.
Erma Franklin’s original has its own gospel and soul roots. Dusty brings her controlled British blue-eyed soul approach. And then Janis completely tears the roof off it. That’s the interesting lesson for musicians.
The song hasn’t changed nearly as much as the interpretation has.
Janis’s performance is raw, powerful and almost uncomfortable at times. She pushes her voice, stretches phrases and sounds as though she’s experiencing the lyric rather than simply singing it.
That version reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped Cheap Thrills reach No. 1.
For singers, it’s a masterclass in emotional delivery. For guitarists, there’s another lesson: don’t fight the singer.
If you’re playing Piece of My Heart in a band, your job isn’t to compete with that vocal. You need to create the space and dynamics that allow the singer to do what Janis’s performance demands.
Summertime
Originally written by George Gershwin for Porgy and Bess in 1935, Summertime quickly escaped the opera and became one of the great jazz standards.
Billie Holiday recorded it in 1936, and since then it has been interpreted by an extraordinary range of artists.
Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Willie Nelson and Eva Cassidy have all recorded it, while instrumental versions from musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis show just how flexible the composition is.
There are countless recordings of Summertime — often cited as one of the most recorded songs ever written.
Janis’s version is particularly interesting because she takes something that can sound elegant and delicate in a jazz setting and turns it into a blues-rock performance.
Again, same song. Completely different world.
Here’s why I love putting multiple versions of standards into the Spytunes playlists – If you’re learning a song for a gig, you never know which version someone means when they call it.
Going Solo
After Cheap Thrills, Janis left Big Brother & The Holding Company and began her solo career.
Her first solo album was I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! in 1969.
There was an attempt to give Janis a more soul and blues-oriented backing band, and the album contains some interesting material, but it didn’t produce a major hit.
One particularly interesting experiment was Janis’s version of the Bee Gees‘ To Love Somebody.
The idea was to turn the hit into a bluesy Janis Joplin performance.
It’s an interesting listen, although I don’t think the transformation works quite as well as some of her other covers. And that’s useful too. Not every great singer automatically improves every song.
Janis was at her best when the material gave her somewhere emotionally interesting to go.
Pearl
Janis died on 4 October 1970, aged just 27, and Pearl was released posthumously a few months later. It would become her defining solo album.
And for me, it’s where Janis’s catalogue really comes together.
There is Move Over, Me and Bobby McGee and Mercedes Benz — three very different songs that demonstrate just how broad her abilities had become.
Move Over
My favourite of the three is Move Over. It’s an underrated Janis song and, in my opinion, a fantastic addition to any female-led blues-rock band’s setlist.
It’s also a great guitar exercise because the guitar and vocal have to lock together so tightly.
The temptation is to think of this sort of song as simply “play some blues-rock”. Don’t. Listen carefully to where the vocal phrases sit, where the guitar responds, and how the two parts work together.
That’s the kind of thing that separates a convincing working-band performance from five people playing the same song in the same room. I really should turn Move Over into a guitar lesson here at Spytunes…
Me and Bobby McGee
Written by Kris Kristofferson and originally recorded before Janis’s version, Me and Bobby McGee has since been covered by an enormous number of artists.
The Highwaymen recorded it with Kristofferson alongside Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.
Willie and Johnny also included it in their live sets, while Dolly Parton, Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers and even Jerry Lee Lewis have all put their own stamp on it.
But I’ll say it anyway: I think Janis’s version is the definitive one. I’m sure plenty of people will disagree. That’s part of what makes songs like this so interesting.
Once a song becomes a standard, there isn’t necessarily one correct way to perform it.
For a working guitarist, though, there’s a practical problem.
If somebody calls Me and Bobby McGee at a gig, which version are they thinking of?
The answer can make a big difference to the arrangement, tempo, feel and even the way you approach the vocal.
That’s why I’ve included several versions in the playlist in my guitar lesson. Listen to them. You might discover that the version you know isn’t the version everybody else knows.
Mercedes Benz
Just Janis, her voice and the song. It’s almost the complete opposite of the huge blues-rock performances she’s famous for.
And that contrast is important. Janis didn’t need a wall of sound behind her to be compelling.
Sometimes removing the band makes the personality of the singer even more obvious.
For guitarists, it’s another useful lesson: arrangement is about knowing what to leave out as much as what to play.
The 27 Club
Janis Joplin died on 4 October 1970 from a heroin overdose, with alcohol also present, at just 27 years old.
Her death placed her among the group of famous musicians who died at that age and later became collectively known as the “27 Club.”
It’s a tragic end to a career that had barely begun. But it’s also worth remembering how much she had already achieved.
Four albums in roughly four years. Big Brother. A major solo career. Cheap Thrills. Pearl.
And a collection of performances that continue to influence singers decades later.
Janis Joplin and the Art of Interpretation
If there’s one thing I’d take from Janis Joplin as a musician, it’s this: Don’t just learn the song. Learn the interpretation.
Piece of My Heart is a perfect example.
Erma Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Janis Joplin all recorded it, but each version tells a different story.
Summertime has been transformed by jazz singers, blues players, rock musicians and instrumentalists.
Me and Bobby McGee has travelled through country, rock and folk.
The underlying compositions survive because they’re strong enough to support completely different interpretations. That’s also why Janis is such a valuable artist to study when you’re building your guitar repertoire.
You learn the chords, yes. But then you have to ask: What is the singer doing? Where does the guitar sit? How much space is there? What makes this particular version sound like this particular artist?
Those questions take you beyond simply memorising a chord sequence.
And that’s where learning Janis Joplin becomes really useful. Her career may have lasted only four years, but the lessons in those four years can keep a guitarist busy for much longer.
Janis Joplin Tunes | Related Pages
Me and Bobby McGee | Chords + TAB
You can learn how to play Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recordings.
| G | G |
Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train…
Check out the full TAB lesson here: Me and Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin) Guitar Lesson with TAB.
Piece of My Heart | Chords + TAB
You can learn Piece of My Heart by Janis Joplin + Dusty Springfield using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, TAB, and backing tracks.
| E A | B A |
Didn’t I make you feel like you…
Summertime | Chords + TAB
You can learn Summertime by Billie Holiday using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, TAB, and backing tracks.
| Bbm7 F7b9/C | Db6 F7b9/C | Bbm7 F7b9/C | Db6 F7b9/C |
Summertime and the living is easy…
Janis Joplin on the web
