Janis Joplin was a true hippie. She was born January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas to a fairly normal family. Her Mom was a registrar at a business college and her Dad was an engineer for Texaco Oil. But, Janis never really fit in. She was overweight as a kid and had bad acne. The rest of the kids bullied her and so she joined with some other kids who were into listening to music as an escape. One of the artists that they listened to was the blues singer Lead Belly. Janis said later that he was the reason she went into music.

Knowing she would never make it as a blues singer in Texas, she moved to California after graduation and eventually joined up with a group called Big Brother and the Holding Company. This was 1966. Her first taste of fame was at the Monterey Pop Festival, held June 16 to 18, 1967 in Monterey, California. It was kind of a west coast Woodstock. Janis and Big Brother performed with people like Jimi Hendrix and The Who. That concert was the tipping point that put Janis Joplin on the map. She was suddenly a star.

Janis Joplin was never really a Top 40 artist. She has one of the most recognized voices and names in the music business, but she only hit the Top 40 two times. Her and Big Brother put out an album called Cheap Thrills which contained the song “Piece of My Heart” which hit number twelve on the charts in 1968. After that she left Big Brother and the Holding Company and joined with a couple other bands, the last of which was Full Tilt Boogie Band. They had just completed a new album called Pearl (which was Janis’ nickname) when on October 4, 1970, Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in her room at the Landmark Motel in Hollywood, California. She was 27 years old.

She died just three weeks after Jimi Hendrix died. He was in London when, on September 18, 1970, he died of a barbiturate overdose. He was also 27 years old. Folklore has created something called the 27 club. This club includes all rock artists who have died at the age of 27. These include Janis and Jimi Hendrix as well as Jim Morrison of the Doors and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. The coincidence of the number 27 wasn’t noticed until 1994 when Kurt Cobain of Nirvana died at the age of 27. Then in 2011, Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27. There are many more artists in the club, but these are the biggest names. Is it a curse? Many people have speculated as to why this happening, but no one has an answer yet.

“Me and Bobby McGee” was written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster for Roger Miller who hit number twelve on the Country chart, but did not make the pop Top 40. Kris offered the song to Janis who included it on her Pearl album. It is only the second song to rank number one posthumously. The first was “(Sittin’ On the) Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding in 1968.

It entered the pop charts for Janis on February 20, 1971 and spent two weeks at number one. Rolling Stone magazine has ranked the song number 148 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

One of my favorite lines in all of music: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose….”