Janis

I sing.

Why do you sing?

Well, because, um, I get to experience

a lot of feelings.

It's really a lot of fun.

You get to feel all kinds of things

that you could hardly find if you went to parties all year

round and made it with everyone you ever wanted to

because you get to feel things that are in your imagination

and another end of truth.

That's why I like music because it's created from

and as it's happening creates feelings.

What could I feel if I

attended your concert tonight?

I'd like you to feel like standing up

and jump up and down in time with the music

and get sweaty and just go with the music.

Just go with it.

Like, rock and roll's very rhythmic.

That's what it's all about.

You know, it's 1,2, 3, 4.

Yeah, you thought you had

found yourself a good girl, one who would love

you and give you the world.

Then you find, hun, that you've been misused.

Look at me, honey.

I'll do what you choose.

I want you to, well, tell Mama all about it.

Yeah, tell Mama.

What do you need?

Tell your Mama, babe.

What you want?

Tell your Mama, babe.

What do you need?

What do you want?

What do you need?

What do you want?

I'll make everything all right.

I'll tell ya.

When you get lonely... and I figure everybody does, now,

because as a matter of fact, everybody does... I'll

tell you what you need, baby.

When you get those strange thoughts in your head,

you don't know where they came from,

man, you've got those strange little weirdness

that's happening to you.

You don't know what they are.

I'll tell you what you need.

You need a sweet-loving mama, baby.

Hun, a sweet-talking mama, babe, you

know, someone to listen to you, someone to want you, someone

to hold you, someone to need you, someone to use you,

someone to want you, someone that needs you, someone

to hold you.

You need a mama, mama, mama, babe, a mama, ma, ma, ma.

Yeah, mama, mama, mama, ma mama.

Tell Mama all about it.

Tell Mama all about it.

What do you need?

What do you want?

Anything I can do, anything I can do,

I'll be your mama, babe, yeah, your mama, babe,

oh, mama, babe, oh, mama, babe, oh, mama, babe, oh, mama, babe.

I'll make everything all right.

Dear family, I managed

to pass my 27th birthday without really feeling it.

Oh, it's such a funny game.

Two years ago, I didn't even want to be it.

No, that's not true.

I've been looking around, and I've noticed something.

After you reach a certain level of talent... and quite a few

have that talent... The deciding factor

is ambition or, as I see it, how much you really need,

need to be loved and need to be proud of yourself.

And I guess that's what ambition is.

It's not all a depraved quest for position or money.

Maybe it's for love, lots of love, ha, Janice.

Port Arthur, to a lot of people,

it was a really good town to grow up in.

I never thought so.

Janice never thought so, and she couldn't

figure out how to make herself like everybody else,

thank goodness.

Our parents, I'm not exactly sure

how they actually met, but they started

dating after Mother had gone away to college and come back

and started working.

Daddy was a mechanical engineer, but he

was able to get a job because at that time,

so many people were away fighting.

So he got a job at Texaco, and he stayed

there his entire working life.

And he came home from work one day and told mother,

let's do something for posterity.

So that's Janis being born in 1943.

So that's Janis being born in 1943.

She joined the choir,

and they kicked her out of the choir.

She wouldn't follow directions, and they said, you're out.

Like most women, Janis

wanted to be beautiful and curvaceous and skinny

like the pictures that she saw in magazines.

And she saw herself, you know, gain weight and get chunky.

Her skin broke out, and her features

weren't that fine, beautiful, female thing that we

see pictures everywhere.

And so she had questions about her own,

you know, desirability.

She demanded to be different.

You know, our parents had given us permission to do it

and then weren't aware of what would happen if you did it.

Janis was the first one in our family to find that out,

that if you were rocking the boat, you might get noticed.

And she rocked the boat as often as she could.

She liked rocking the boat.

The world was changing,

and I think that Janis's interpretation of what being

good was included things that a lot of people in the South

weren't yet ready to include.

She said, I think immigration is the right thing to do.

Well, our hometown had an active KKK chapter.

And what happened was she was harassed

by some guys in her class.

They threw pennies at her.

They called her names, and she became a target

for the last three years of high school.

She started dressing differently, wearing loafers

without socks and tight skirts.

Her hair was becoming more, like, beatnik,

and still there was an aspect of her sexuality

and her personality that was at odds.

Where does she go?

What does she do?

She was pushing the limits, and women

weren't supposed to swear.

And women were supposed to be demure

and not know that anything existed below their waistlines.

And I met her in high school, and she wouldn't go away.

She was always calling us up, one of us or the other,

and say, what are you doing tonight'?

Where are we going?

She was a lot of trouble.

We went to Louisiana, and she would start fights which

we didn't want started because the Cajuns

were known, good fighters.

But she got a kick out of it, just playing the bad girl.

She wasn't a bad girl.

I mean, she just liked to bait the men.

You know, we would deny all knowledge of her

and barely escape with our lives.

That made her real dangerous to take to a bar.

I mean, she was amusing, so we took her to the beach with us.

She borrowed some records which were obscure.

One of them was a record by Odetta.

All of a sudden, she busted into a perfect imitation of Odetta

on the record, and everybody was just

stunned... this little, troublesome kid, you know,

could sing that well.

This particular night Janis said,

let's go see this wonderful Austin

you're always talking about.

So we pulled in at five thirty in the morning,

and you could hear music.

And it wasn't recorded music.

It was live music.

And Janis grabbed my arm, and she said,

Jack, I am going to like it here.

On accident, I discovered

I had an incredibly loud voice.

So I started singing blues because that was always

what I liked, and, you know, I got in a bluegrass band,

played hillbilly music in Austin, Texas for free beer.

I used to sing at folk clubs just for a goof.

We call ourselves the Waller Creek Boys,

and instantly Janis became one of the boys.

People just stared open mouthed, and she

was not ever accepted, really, except by the folk community.

Growing up, her peers picked on her and bullied her.

And by the time she got to Austin,

and by the time I knew her, she had already been

profoundly hurt over and over.

And so in Austin, it was the same way.

Every year, the fraternities held a contest,

and people could nominate someone to be ugliest man.

And someone nominated Janis, and all these jerks voted for her.

And it crushed her, saddest thing I ever saw.

You know, it really was.

To that point, I'd never seen Janis cry.

Janis had a very tough exterior, but it really got her.

It got her bad.

And I said, Janis, they don't mean anything to you.

They're... they're not even in your class.

It became increasingly harder to fit

into a group of angry, angry men who liked to pick on her.

Even though she ran around with a tight group of friends that

were into books and ideas, she needed

to go out to where the people were

that wrote those books, where the people were

that sung those songs.

Where does she go?