Janis Joplin album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She
Janis Joplin and deeply vulnerable", and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman, titled "Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin" (1973), was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, "Going Down With Janis" (1974), attracted a lot of attention, with its provocative title referring to her performing oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin, in September 1970. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew would later describe Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a