Janis Lyn Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on ,[REF] to Dorothy Bonita East (1913 - 1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910 - 1987), an engineer at Texaco.
Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer[REF] and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies [REF].