By McStellar
Last month, I was standing in the well-established liquor store down the street from my place and staring at the limited wine selection. Ten minutes earlier I had realized my place was bone dry – except for a bottle of scotch, and I’m not a fan. Out the door I went, on a mission to get some good red wine to accompany me on my journey through my latest library pick, “Janis: Her Life and Music,”by Holly George-Warren.
Growing up in an opinionated, music-listening family, I found that Janis Joplin was one of several artists that did not make the cut. Not many females did. My mother didn’t care for her “raspy voice” and my dad wasn’t into “that hippie sh–.” Any dose of Joplin was delivered through my 1997 Buick Century’s stock radio while I hustled to and from jobs as a teen. At best, I could rattle off some lyrics of Bobby McGee, maybe one other, but I wasn’t too acquainted with Joplin’s music.
A few years back, her psychedelic 1964 Porsche 356 went up for auction and an editor where I work covered the story for our digital audience. Seeing the colorful body on four wheels triggered me to want to know more about her. A mental note was made and filed away for a rainy day.
That day finally arrived last month when I made my library choice.
Back inside the liquor store, I grabbed a bottle of rioja and bellied up to the counter. The store usually has decent music playing, which makes me more partial to this place than others in town. Before I paid, I asked how much a bottle of Drambuie costs, as my personal stash was drained. The manager stopped ringing me up, looked at me behind his mask, and said I wasn’t the usual demographic for the stuff. When I asked him who was, he shot back, chuckling, “Eighty-year-old women … You’d be the youngest customer I’ve ever sold it to.”
To this, I giggled. I am used to people having these sorts of reactions to things I say or do, as when friends stop by to find me smoking my grandfather’s pipe or playing some obscure jazz. Point is, I am used to feeling like the oddball. As it turns out, I didn’t expect to feel a kindship with Joplin on this.
A bottle of red in hand – a staple for Joplin, I later learned – I headed out the door into the rain. Back home, I dove into the book … a rollercoaster ride of drug and alcohol abuse, endeavors to sober up and go back to school, engagement to a con artist, hitchhiking trips from Texas to California while trying to “make it on the scene,” a zillion lovers, and … well … it could keep one captivated for hours. I’d been at it for four when I finally peeled my eyes from the pages. At 12:22 a.m. I was 100 or more pages into her biography and my water glass, doubling as a wine glass, was empty. I got up to fill it and put on her first studio album with Big Brother and the Holding Company as a nightcap.
As I listened into the wee hours of the morning, I started to identify the liberties she took, changing the original lyrics of old blues and gospel songs. I let the harsh and witty lyrics of her own gems, such as “Women Is Losers,” wash over me. I could hear the joy and pain in her voice and her manipulation of old blues songs. I was incapable of appreciating either, until I got to know her story better. She was known for searching for obscure blues recordings and listening to them until she knew them like the back of her hand, something we share in common. By this point in the evening, I was bursting to share some of these incredible revelations.
I claim no professional education in music or instrumental know-how, or any out-of-this-world knowledge about music. However, my favorite thing to talk about is music – the same way some talk about politics … passionately. So, this is my attempt at sharing the music I love with a wider audience.
As we sidle up to fall and into winter, take the time to pour yourself some good red wine, or help bring the buying demographic for Drambuie down, then join me for some musical anecdotes and journeys through some of the greatest music ever created.
Until next time, “Bye, Bye, Baby.”
Further Revelations
By McStellar
Joplin’s life in words comes off as a pitch-perfect story of parent-child relationship issues, fame, love and tragedy. Albeit too short, her life was as colorful as the shapely body of her Porsche. She twice smashed The Doors’ Jim Morrison over the head with a glass bottle. She embraced her bisexual tendencies. She was loyal and democratic with her Big Brother family and kept the finances and communal living spaces in order.
Her father, a depressed man, shared his angst with her and molded much of her outlook on life. As a teen, Joplin began defying her mother’s desire for a dress-wearing, churchgoing, doting wife. Instead, she was a beatnik laying tracks to surrounding Texas towns, to begin cutting her teeth in the blues and country music scenes.
Her first band, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was one of a power-packed line up that Chet Helms, of Family Dog, promoted – including Airplane (Jefferson Airplane) and the Grateful Dead. Each brought advice and guidance to the queen of counterculture as she navigated the music industry, relationships and personal demons.
Besides flexing her vocal abilities to the max, she also pushed the limits with alcohol and drugs. She battled what she called the “kozmic blues,” namesake of the band, and doped herself with heroin – leading to her early and lonely passing.
Though most would group Joplin into the psychedelic rock genera, a case could be made that her true equals are the likes of notable blues singers Bessie Smith, Odetta, and Ma Rainey, etc. Joplin’s full discography includes two albums with Big Brother & the Holding Company, one with Kozmic Blues Band and her final with Full Tilt Boogie (posthumous).
