Janis Ian is 63 years old today. A songwriter, singer, musician, columnist and science fiction author, Ian first entered the folk music scene while still a teenager in the mid-sixties. She was most active musically in that decade and the 1970s, she has continued recording into the 21st century. She has won two Grammy Awards, the first in 1975 for her song At Seventeen, and the second in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Album, for her autobiography, Societys Child (nearly 40 years later). Born to a Jewish family in New York City, she was primarily raised in New Jersey, initially on a farm, and attended East Orange High School in East Orange, New Jersey and the New York City High School of Music & Art. Her parents, Victor (a music teacher) and Pearl, ran a summer camp in upstate New York. In that Cold War era they were frequently under government surveillance because of their left-wing politics. Ian would allude to these years later in her song God and the FBI. Young Janis admired the work of folk pioneers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. Starting with piano lessons at the age of 6 or 7, by the time she hit her teens, Ian had learned the organ, harpsichord, French horn, flute and guitar. At the age of 12, Ian wrote her first song, Hair of Spun Gold, which was subsequently published in the folk publication Broadside and was later recorded for her debut album. At the age of thirteen, Ian wrote and sang her first hit single, Societys Child (Baby Ive Been Thinking), about an interracial romance forbidden by a girls mother and frowned upon by her peers and teachers: the girl ultimately decides to end the relationship, claiming the societal norms of the day have left her no choice. Produced by George Shadow Morton and released three times between 1965 and 1967, Societys Child finally became a national hit upon its third release after Leonard Bernstein featured it in a TV special titled Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution. The songs lyrical content was taboo for some radio stations, and they withdrew or banned it from their playlists accordingly; in her 2008 autobiography Societys Child, Ian recalls receiving hate mail and death threats as a response to the song, and mentions that a radio station in Atlanta that played it was burned down. In the summer of 1967, Societys Child reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100, the single having sold 600,000 copies, and the album 350,000. In 2001, Societys Child was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which honors recordings considered timeless and important to music history. Her early music was compiled on a double CD entitled Societys Child: The Verve Recordings in 1995. Ian still tours and has a devoted fan base. Her autobiography, Societys Child, was released by Penguin in mid-2008 to critical acclaim. Ian is an outspoken critic of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a record industry organization which she sees as acting against the interests of musicians and consumers. As such, she has willingly released several of her songs for free download from her website. Along with science fiction authors Eric Flint and Cory Doctorow, she has argued that their experience provides conclusive evidence that free downloads dramatically increased hard-copy sales, contrary to the claims of RIAA and NARAS. Ians signature tune At Seventeen sold over two million singles in the United States alone yet was never certified. In addition to being an award-winning singer-songwriter, Ian writes science fiction. A long-time reader of the genre, she got into science fiction fandom in 2001, attending the Millennium Philcon. Her short stories have been published in anthologies, and she co-edited, with Mike Resnick, the anthology Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian, published in 2003 (ISBN 978-0-7564-0177-1). Here, at 16, Ian performs “Society’s Child” on the Smothers Brothers Show.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 05:28:39 +0000
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