Joplin is fully able to go for emotional broke. Her version of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham's soul ballad "A Woman Left Lonely" is a harrowing journey along Desolation Row, while the strangled howl with which she opens Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy's "Cry Baby" sends a chilling signal of the ravages to come. "Get It While You Can," the devastating track that closes the album, crackles with desperation. It is a scarred survivor's advice to her sex: Love and pleasure must be seized whenever they offer themselves, though they are mere preludes to the pain that will surely follow.
Of course, Joplin was not a survivor, and that lends Pearl (her nickname for herself, chosen to match a female lover's tag of Ruby) a poignancy that is as undeniable now as it was upon its posthumous release, in 1971. Her humor on the self-mocking a cappella prayer "Mercedes Benz" (which was recorded in one take) includes this knowing barfly's request: "Prove that you love me/And buy the next round." And her lovely rendition of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" is her greatest studio recording - its eloquent restraint all the more effective in communicating the song's heartbreak.
Kristofferson, who had been Joplin's lover not long before her death, cried when he heard her version of the song. "Did we do this?" he reportedly asked as he stood before her dead body. It's the question that caring survivors are always left with, and one that Pearl, in its frightening beauty, does little to resolve. (RS 822)
ANTHONY DeCURTIS
Released four months after her heroin-related death on October 4th, 1970, Janis Joplin's 1971 album Pearl ended up being the defining record in the revolutionary singer's career, as well as an ellipsis suggesting what might have been. Like Jimi Hendrix's The Cry of Love and Elliott Smith's From a Basement on the Hill, Pearl was only a work in progress when its principal creator unexpectedly passed. But unlike those records, Pearl was Joplin's biggest commercial success, and, song for song, her best album, despite some undercooked moments and signs of incompletion. Like its predecessors -- 1969's I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! and the earlier discs with Big Brother and the Holding Company -- Pearl is short on Joplin-penned originals. The differences are that Pearl was overseen by expert Doors producer Paul Rothchild, and the backup group is the rock-solid, mostly Canadian quintet Full Tilt Boogie Band, Joplin's own version of Bob Dylan's Band. Crucially, Pearl also includes Kris Kristofferson's folk-rock smash "Me and Bobby McGee" and Joplin's strongest songwriting -- the ass-kicking opening track, "Move Over," and the consumerist-gospel spoof "Mercedes Benz," which she wails without accompaniment. By contrast, "Buried Alive in the Blues" appears without vocals (she had planned to record them on October 5th). Just as "Piece of My Heart" and "Ball and Chain" were obscure soul tracks that Joplin made her own, Pearl 's bulk is R&B rewritten as rootsy rock, most notably on the final cut, which served as her epitaph: "Get It While You Can." Expanded to capitalize on last year's DVD release of Festival Express, the concert film chronicling her three-date train trek across Canada with the Band, the Grateful Dead and others, Pearl -- Legacy Edition includes a powerhouse live disc culled from those Canadian dates, as well as alternate versions and ephemera from the Pearl sessions. Much of this material appeared on previous reissues, but this package does the best job of representing Joplin in her final months. Although her slurred live monologues suggest a shift from hard drugs to heavy drinking, Joplin had otherwise become more focused in her life and art. Had she not relapsed, Pearl might have marked a new beginning rather than a tragic ending.
.jpg)
