From IceMagazine.com:
http://www.icemagazine.com/stories/218/joplin.shtm
Janis' Pearl Sparkles In New Expanded Edition
By the time Pearl, Janis Joplin’s second solo album, reached No. 1 in Billboard in February 1971, the singer from Port Arthur, TX by way of San Francisco had been gone for nearly five months, dead of a heroin overdose at age 27. Grieving rock fans ultimately made Pearl the most successful album of Joplin’s career — it topped the chart for nine weeks, one more than Cheap Thrills, the 1968 breakthrough with her first band, Big Brother & the Holding Company, had spent in that position.
Still considered by many to be the high watermark of Joplin’s all-too-brief discography, Pearl joins Sony’s Legacy Editions series when it’s reissued as a deluxe double-disc, 29-track set on May 31. Nine of the 19 bonus tracks that flesh out the original album are previously unreleased; the entirety of the second disc is constructed from live shows that took place in Canada between June 28 and July 4, 1970 as part of the now legendary Festival Express tour.
Joplin was undeniably in fine vocal form when she entered the studio that September for a flurry of sessions that would eventually comprise Pearl, its title borrowed from a nickname she had recently acquired. Working with her still-new Full Tilt Boogie Band — guitarist John Till, pianist Richard Bell, organist Ken Pearson, bassist Brad Campbell and drummer Clark Pierson — Joplin and producer Paul Rothchild turned their attention largely to soul and blues-oriented material by such established songwriters as Jerry Ragovoy, Mort Shuman, Bobby Womack, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham and Nick Gravenites. Joplin also laid down a song written by a relative newcomer, fellow Texan Kris Kristofferson: "Me And Bobby McGee" provided her with the only No. 1 single of her career, albeit also posthumously.
The decision to give Pearl the Legacy Editions treatment was a no-brainer, according to reissue producer Bob Irwin, as was enlarging the original program with 13 tracks from the Festival Express gigs. "This was finally a chance to cull through the tapes and assemble the concert in its original running order," Irwin tells ICE. "Although it was slightly different from night to night, the basic structure of her performance was the same. We’re not trying to mislead everyone and make them believe this is one show. We put together what we considered to be the strongest performance of each song. These are the premier performances from the Festival Express tour."
Some of the Festival Express material was issued on earlier collections, such as Farewell Song, Janis Joplin in Concert and Columbia/Legacy’s 1999 Pearl Expanded Edition, the last time the album was overhauled. Six tracks on the live disc see official release on the new upgrade for the first time: "Maybe," "Summertime," "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)," "Piece of My Heart," "Cry Baby" and an instrumental showcase for the band titled "That’s Rock ’N’ Roll."
Rounding out the additions to the studio half are alternate versions of "Move Over" and Ragovoy-Shuman’s "My Baby," plus an instrumental simply titled "Pearl," recorded by the band six days after Joplin’s death. The song, Irwin explains, "was pretty much a jam situation. While I’ve known about the song’s existence for quite awhile, we thought that it was too personal to fit into a compilation or a boxed set. It was so unique to this record and to Janis’ death that it had to find a place within the structure of the Pearl album."
–Jeff Tamarkin
Janis Joplin's "Pearl" To Be Re-Released
Moderator: SMLCHNG