Janis Joplin: There Was No-one Like Her

It’s 50 years since Janis Joplin died of an overdose in Los Angeles, aged only 27. Her sad death is the one main fact many people know about her – but for true fans, she remains the best female rock singer there’s been. For half a century, interest in Joplin has barely diminished. In fact, the list of biographies has been growing with the anniversary of her accidental death on October 4th, 1970 at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood. Jimi Hendrix had died only two weeks earlier. Books about Joplin generally list her earliest musical influence as Bessie Smith — the powerful African American blues singer who died in Mississippi six years before Joplin was born into a middle-class family in Texas… read more >