Janis Fink Ian - what a folk singer!

Janis Fink (1951-) was born and grew up on a New Jersey farm,  raised by Jewish parents; her father Victor taught music, inspiring her early interest in the piano, which she began studying at 2. Then she learned to play acoustic guitar and harmonica. Mother Pearl worked in an eduational career, and in that Cold War era, both parents were often under FBI surveillance because of their progressive politics.

She attended New York City High School of Music & Art, performing at school functions and at local New York folk clubs. she dropped out school, however, following the release of a problem piece.

Young Janis admired the work of folk pioneers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. Her youth included a diverse range of singers and musicians who were popular between the 1930s and 1960s, among them American blues-folk singer French singer and actress Edith Piaf, and American jazz singer Billie Holiday. At 12, Janis wrote her first song, Hair of Spun Gold, which was later published in the folk publication Broadside then recorded for her debut album. She legally changed her name to Janis Ian in 1964, taking her brother Eric's middle name as her new surname.

Janice Ian (centre), Bruce Springsteen (left) and Billy Joel (right)

Janis’ concert in Philadelphia in 1974

miamiartzine

In that same year, perhaps coincidentally, Janis wrote and sang her first hit single, Society’s Child, about an interracial romance forbidden by a girl’s mother and rubbished by her school colleagues. The girl decided to end the relationship, believing the social morals then had given her no other choice. Produced by George Morton and released thrice between 1965-7,  the song was rejected by 22 record labels for being too provocative, it was finally released by Verve. Janis recorded the song in 1965, when she was 14 years old, and released it in 1966. 

Society's Child was bittersweet commentary on adolescent cruelty, illusion of popularity and teenage angst, as reflected upon from the perspective of a 24-year-old. Note that the lyrics were totally intolerable for some radio stations, and they withdrew it from their playlists. However in mid 1967, Society’s Child did very well, reaching #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. Society’s Child became a national hit after Leonard Bernstein highlighted it in a television special.  

In her later auto-biograhy Child, Janis discussed 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. It reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and won the 1975 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal. 

Her next album, Between the Lines (1975), went platinum and the album reached number one on Billboard’s Album chart. It was quickly certified gold, and later earned a platinum certification for sales of 1,000,000+ copies sold in the U.S.  In 1976 she won her first Grammy Award, for best female pop vocal performance, for the song. 

Janise finally became one of the first Indie artists, resurfacing in 1993. Although Janis never regained her early stardom, she continued writing and performing and after 12 years without a major release, she returned to the music scene with the Grammy-nominated, folk-inspired Breaking Silence (1993).  She had to mortgage her house to record Breaking Silence, which discussed incest, abuse and the Holocaust. Defying all expectations, the album became a critical and commercial success.  She returned to recording an album every couple of years while collaborating with other artists, also writing science fiction and has published some short stories.  She also came out as gay with that release. 

Her 1995 album, Revenge, featured a mix of jazz and samba. Her later albums include God & the FBI (2000), Billie’s Bones (2004) and Folk Is the New Black (2006) in which she did her own songwriting. She released the book Society’s Child: An Autobiography in 2008; in 2012 she released an audio recording of the book, winning a 2013 Grammy Award for best spoken word album.

Disc jockeys across the country were reluctant to play the song until Ian performed it on a Leonard Bernstein television special and became an instant celebrity. Even then in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, the subject ignited an explosive response and the adolescent was targeted with hate mail, death threats, booing and heckling. Nonetheless Janis Ian climbing the charts and embarked on a national tour. With Verve, she subsequently recorded three other albums, For All the Seasons of Your Mind (1967); Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink (1968), and Who Really Cares (1969).

Janis Ian's brother, Eric Fink

Stockton School

Despite her widespread publicity and early success when she was touted as the female Bob Dylan, Janis became disillusioned with the music industry and briefly withdrew from the music scene after the release of Who Really Cares. Her return to recording in the early 1970s was slow, yielding several unremarkable albums. In 1974, however, she finally had another success, with Stars, produced with Columbia Records. The album featured the hit song “Jesse,” which was written by Janis Ian and had been made famous the previous year by rhythm-and-blues singer Roberta Flack. 

Following the success of the single Fly Too High, from the album Night Rains (1979), it was popular in Australia and the Netherlands and was a #1 hit in South Africa.  But Janis experienced various ups and downs, professionally and personally. In 1978 she married Portuguese filmmaker Tino Sargo; however the two divorced in 1983. When her record contract expired in the early 1980s, she had trouble finding a new label because of her controversial songs and declining popularity. She decided to relocate to Nashville, where she carved out a niche writing songs for other artists, including Bette Midler, Amy Grant and John Mellencamp. 

Janis Ian won a Grammy in 1975 for her song At Seventeen, her second song to do so. This was a stark, intimate, heartstring-tugging first-person account of the realities of life for teenage ugly duckling girls which brought her new fans around the world. Listen to  At Seventeen (1976) on youtube.

Her popularity maximised in the late 1970s, with musical guest appearances on Saturday Night Live and further Grammy nominations. After breaking her recording contract with CBS in 1982, she spent a decade away from the spotlight, during which she suffered personal and financial setbacks, particularly after industry insiders declared her unmarketable because she was gay. 

In 2003 her Toronto wedding to Patricia Snyder was the first gay marriage highlighted in the New York Times Vows section. As of 2023 she has released 23 albums, with 2022’s The Light at the End of the Line billed as her final. Most of her final tour of 2022 was cancelled due to vocal scarring that had left her unable t sing. The Janis Ian Archives at Berea College, which Ian donated, was opened in Oct 2024.

Pop-Folk songstress Janis Ian has sustained a long career, but is best known for two hits that established her as a writer unafraid to take on weighty subjects. The first was Society’s Child, a controversial 1965 song about an interracial teen romance that was a hit when Janis was just 15, 

    Janis Ian, Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen, 1974

Irish Independent

Despite the success she earned with the song and her debut album, Janis went broke in the years that followed, as her next few records failed to generate significant sales. Tagged a one-hit wonder, she announced her retirement from music and married a photojournalist she had met at a peace rally. Neither the marriage nor the retirement lasted long, and Ian found chart success again in 1975, with the record Between the Lines and its single  But the next period in Ian’s life was full of  career hardships - slow selling records and by 1981 no record label at all.