Three months after she died on October 4, 1970, on January 11, 1971, Columbia Records released “Pearl”, the only album Joplin ever recorded with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, the touring ensemble that had backed her on the Festival Express. Peaking at #1 on the Billboard 200, a position it held for nine weeks, Pearl included some of Janis’s most familiar and best-loved performances including her cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” and her off-the-cuff a cappella “Mercedes Benz.”
The Janis Joplin’s 69th Birthday is honored by Legacy Recordings with the releasing of “The Pearl Sessions”, a two-CD set of Joplin’s final studio recordings.
The Pearl Sessions brings together, for the first time in one package, the original mono versions of the album’s 45s alongside the original LP tracks as well as the revelatory newly-discovered alternate versions, outtakes and vocal takes of Pearl’s classic tracks. The recording were discovered when researchers were putting together material for a 40th anniversary edition of “Pearl”, and find a previously uncatalogued audio tapes from the album’s sessions, produced by Paul Rothschild. Read more Janis Joplin – Pearl Sessions and Move Forward RMX