‘American Masters’ profiles Janis Joplin

The image of Janis Joplin is one of the strongest in rock music history, but naturally, there was a person behind the image.

The iconically passionate singer is recalled by some of those closest to her in writer-director Amy J. Berg’s profile “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” which had a U.S. theatrical run late last year and makes its PBS debut as an “American Masters” offering Tuesday.

Joplin’s sister and brother, Laura and Michael, are among those who reflect on the personal side of the performer who had made her mark on pop culture when she died at age 27 in 1970. Her Big Brother and the Holding Company bandmates Peter Albin, Sam Andrew and Dave Getz also contribute recollections.

For all others heard in the film – also including Melissa Etheridge, Pink, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Weir, Juliette Lewis, Country Joe McDonald, talk-show veteran Dick Cavett and music impresario Clive Davis — its strongest voice appropriately is that of Joplin herself. It’s relayed through rare audio and video clips, but also in large part via narrator Chan Marshall (aka indie rock’s “Cat Power”), reading from letters Joplin wrote to her parents.

“For me, going into this, the legacy of Janis was always about how she died instead of how she lived,” says filmmaker Berg. “And when I look at what she’s done for women, for women in music and for me as a woman, I felt kind of a responsibility to show her life. She left such a strong amount of impact on the music scene, and she was such a soulful, intelligent, beautiful person … so for me, it was very important to not focus on the worst part of her life, but the best part of the her life.”

Laura Joplin had a deeply personal inside view of that. “I knew Janis as my big sister, six years older,” she notes, “and she was very important to me as a child. And as she got older and went away, I was missing a lot of that. But the shock of her death forced, I think, the entire family to come together and learn more about her than we would have probably been involved in her life otherwise. It’s been both fascinating and emotional to feel the role that she has in the life of the public. And I’m extremely proud of her, and also feel a real obligation to be true to her for her public.”

Both the public and private sides of Janis are recognized by Laura: “I recognize the icon because I hear from her fans, and just from people I meet. They want to talk to me through that sense of an icon, and I respect that because our culture respects it. But certainly for me, the intimate moments are my memories — the quiet ones of the girl who read ‘The Wizard of Oz’ to me and took me by the hand and walked around the neighborhood. And hey, those are wonderful moments.”

Those familiar with such Joplin standards as “Me and Bobby McGee” (co-written by Kristofferson), “Down on Me” and “Piece of My Heart” will find them in “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” which substantially covers the roots of the professional legend Joplin became. Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Getz clearly recalls his first exposure to her.

“We only auditioned a few singers before Janis,” he says. “Peter, who is the bass player and really started the band, was the main singer. I think he really was the only singer in a way, and he just thought he wasn’t good, and he thought we should have a singer like Jefferson Airplane or maybe one or two other bands that had women singers. Janis was only the third singer that I remember, but I think a lot of us knew that she was going to be the one we were looking for. And of course, when she opened her mouth and sang with us at the first rehearsal we had … to me, it was just, ‘Yeah. That’s it.’ ”