Janis Joplin and her Blues

"I wanted to smoke dope, take dope. lick dope, suck dope, fuck dope anything i could lay my hands on i wanted to do it... Hey, man, what is it? i"ll try it. How do you do it? Do you suck it? No? You swallow it? I'll swallow it" - Janis Joplin, 1970 a few months before her death.

Janis Joplin had the blues, and didn't she let the world know about it. If pain had a singing voice, it would sound a lot like the Joplin howl. Straight from the gut she sang, via her tortured soul and her broken heart. Even a line like, 'Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz' scorched in tones of raw hurt, symbolic of all the fine things in life Janis could not have - simple things like a pretty face, a loving husband, and maybe a couple of kids to make tomorrow something to look forward to.

In the 27 years of her life, tragically curtailed when she became yet another victim of heroin, she proved beyond any doubt that Sophie Tucker was in no way the last of the red hot mammas.

As she grew up, her fate was gradually sealed. Completely lacking the demure, cleavage-clenching prettiness of your average Southern belle ( and possessing a terrible complexion), she became the focus for horrible abuse at her school. That and a tendency to hang out with the boys, would shape her life. It would be a major heartbreak for her that men were perfectly content, willing even to be seduced from the safe distance of a stage when she sang, but once the show was over, she went home alone while they retreated into the arms of girls designed with more conventional ideas of beauty in mind.

Displaying a serious alcohol problem as early as the age of 17, she was admitted to the local hospital and subsequently saw a psychiatrist. It was clear that flight was necessary.

So off to Loas Angeles she went, then to Venice Beach, and on her return to port Arthur it was noticed by everyone that Janis was now a fully-fledged wildcat, combining a manic, head-on hard drinking charm with a Californian inspired beatnik lifestyle.