By Jeff Tamarkin

By the time that Pearl, Janis Joplin's second solo album, reached number one in Billboard in February 1971, the singer from Port Arthur, Texas 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 and 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 (a documentary of the psychedelic train trip was itself recently released on DVD).

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 (best known for his work with the Doors) 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 Janis Joplin with the only number one single of her career, albeit also posthumously.

Joplin received sole songwriting credit for the album's opener, "Move Over," and shared the honors with poet Michael McClure on the acappella "Mercedes Benz," which she cut just three days before her October 4, 1970 death in Los Angeles.

The decision to give Pearl the Legacy Editions treatment was a no-brainer, according to reissue producer Bob Irwin, as was appending 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. The encores sometimes differed but the setup was the same, the band was the same, everything marries well. 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 has been issued before, 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."

As incendiary as the live half is, Joplin aficionados will likely be equally intrigued by the bonus tracks on disc one. "I don't think anyone had ever mixed the alternate versions down until we did that here," Irwin says. "Those tapes were never touched. They were mixed to match the spirit of the original record."

Three of the six studio-recorded extras have seen the digital light of day before, all on the 1993 Janis boxed set. "Happy Birthday, John (Happy Trails)" was Joplin's impromptu greeting card to her longtime road manager, John Byrne Cooke, who penned the liner notes for Pearl: Legacy Edition. An alternate version of "Cry Baby" and the demo of "Me And Bobby McGee" are also reprised.

Of the latter, Irwin notes, "She was basically playing it for Paul Rothchild. They were laughing back and forth. Janis said, 'I bet you I can nail this song in one take.' And then she did. It's amazing to hear her say that and then look on the multi-track box and see one take. She sang it once, circled the take, done. The arrangement was all hers and you can hear her bangles banging against the top of the guitar. She tells Paul where the band should take it over."

Rounding out the additions to the studio half are alternate versions of "Move Over" and Ragovoy-Shuman's "My Baby," and an instrumental, simply titled "Pearl," recorded by the band six days after Joplin's death. "When Janis died," says Irwin, "a lot of these songs weren't complete, and the band continued to go in and do their sweetening work, adding overdubs. Literally, they recorded the song 'Pearl' as a tribute. It came about in the studio-it was pretty much a jam situation. You can see where Paul Rothchild labeled the song 'Pearl' on the box. He deliberately titled it that. 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."