Listening again - after many years - Janis Joplin's earliest recording, her blues work made long before she metamorphosed into rock queen of Woodstock.
Going back to the time when I first heard Joplin (my tender, easy impressionable teenage years) I remember buying into the whole "early death" story and naturally loving the whole idea of small town "perpetual victim" who made it big in the world but burned out lonely and unloved. It was easy to admire the music, but big part of it all was her life story that was so appealing to a spotty teenager who could 100% feel their imagined similarities in life, except that of course I was nowhere close to either premature death of worldwide fame. But if you asked me back than, I guess I was ready to burn fast and die young, oh irony.
Trough the years I had changed my mind about it all and about Joplin to be honest - with my own life experiences, I came to see life somewhat differently and more precious than to simply throw it all away in self destruction. Luckily for me, I didn't succumb to alcohol and drugs - my escape from life were books and music - and I had discarded the whole idea of belonging to any "cool" group if that was the price I had to pay. Or I simply matured enough to value my own perspective better than what anybody else thinks. So I remembered Joplin as a boozer who died, while I grew up into a overweight, middle aged man who is slightly embarrassed with the memory of it all.
When I heard her early blues performances initially, I must have been confused because it had nothing to do with her later rock music or Big Brother & The Holding Company - but I do remember that I found it very appealing even back than and here is where the first, initial roots of my love for early 1920s blues were sown, even if I was not aware of it than. Decades later when I finally discovered and heard world of Bessie Smith and her court ladies, I embraced it immediately and passionately without realising that it was Joplin who first pointed me there, I understand it now. So I listened this music now, this morning and my heart sings along with her - I do enjoy this music very much, its raw, passionate, pulsating and absolutely real even though Joplin at that time must have seen completely strange to audiences used to British Invasion, Beatles and Motown popular back than - she was doing Bessie Smith and singing "Black Mountain Blues", now that was an original! Her voice even back than was completely unorthodox, pure lonesome wail, not feminine or pretty in any conventional manner of girl singers, even so early in the game she absolutely refused to play the cutesy game and was her own self, uncompromising and idealistic. Thinking about it now from this perspective, I understand that she was a true original and no wonder she later found her true success in rock psychedelia, although I am absolutely 100% sure her heart lied in classic 1920s blues and had she lived on, she would probably return to this music sooner or later. She would probably love what Maria Muldaur did recently with her blues albums trilogy and probably would have even appear as a special guest on them.
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