Janis Joplin died 56 years ago today, on October 4, 1970, at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Los Angeles. She was 27, and she was found after failing to appear for a recording session, according to History.com. The cruelest part is what she was recording. She was days from finishing “Pearl.”
The album arrived on January 11, 1971 and spent nine weeks at number one. That March, “Me and Bobby McGee,” written by Kris Kristofferson, went to number one for two weeks, making it the second posthumous chart-topping single of the rock era, after Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”
‘Pearl’ Made Janis Joplin Immortal
The voice on that record still sounds like nothing else, raw and joyful and wounded all at once. She left behind a small catalog and an enormous shadow, and her Woodstock-era peers have carried the torch for decades since. Among them is Carlos Santana, who at 79 is back in Las Vegas for his 14th year at the House of Blues.
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, she sang on the record she never heard climb the charts. Fifty-six years later, we are still not over it.