Seventy–one years ago today, Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas.
When I was in college, a female acquaintance and I used to listen to Janis Joplin on my friend's stereo while we drank beer and smoked cigarettes. Joplin had been dead for quite awhile at that time, but my friend and I were throwbacks to the '60s. Janis was one of our favorites, even though she wasn't one of our contemporaries.
If it is hard to picture Janis Joplin at 71, you have to remember that she has been dead for more than 40 years, forever a member of the 27 Club. Maybe she just burned out, a victim of all the booze and hard drugs she inflicted on herself. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would flame out the way she did.
(I always think of Joplin when I hear Neil Young sing "Hey Hey, My My." Of course, that could be because my friend was a Neil Young fan, and there's mental association involved for me there.)
"It's hard to imagine what Janis would be like in the 21st century," writes USA Today, "but it's safe to say no one has come close to matching her voice since."
Joplin was, as USA Today observes, "one of the first major female forces in rock 'n' roll." She was a pioneer, and pioneers have to be tough. You have to work hard, and you have to party hard if you're going to be taken seriously.
Her only #1 hit was "Me and Bobby McGee," which was released the same month that the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon and only rose to #1 after Joplin's death the following year.
On Rolling Stone's list of the Top 100 artists, Joplin ranks #46. Among female artists, only Aretha Franklin and Madonna rank higher.
"She loved her whiskey and made no bones about it," wrote Rosanne Cash for Rolling Stone. "This was a full–blown one–of–a–kind woman — no stylist, no publicist, no image–maker. It was just Janis."
Rolling Stone's list was tough for solo female artists to make. The only other women on it after Joplin were Patti Smyth, Joni Mitchell and Tina Turner.
"She wasn't just a great woman in rock — at the time she was the woman in rock," gushed Cash. "Janis really created this whole world of possibility for women in music: Without Janis Joplin, there would be no Melissa Etheridge. Without Janis, there would be no Chrissie Hynde, no Gwen Stefani. There would be no one."
That may be a bit extreme. Women's voices in rock could not be kept muzzled, but the truth is that Joplin accelerated their influence on modern music.
I've been observing the reactions to all this from my friends via Facebook in a kind of detached way. In all honesty, I can't say I was one of her fans. I didn't follow her career closely. I wasn't overly familiar with her music.
(I'll say this about her music — there were times when it reminded me of the music of Jim Croce, a performer from my adolescence who also died young. They had different styles, but there were moments when I would hear things in Winehouse's songs that brought back memories ...)
So I've been keeping my opinions to myself. I've expressed my sympathy to those who seem to be truly grieving this loss because I know all too well how it feels to lose someone who was important to you — even if you never met that person.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't have anything against female singers — I admire the recordings of the likes of Janis Joplin, Carole King and Joni Mitchell as well as groups with prominent female members, like Fleetwood Mac and Heart.
But that was the music of my generation. Winehouse always seemed to have more appeal for folks of my goddaughter's generation — and for some who are a little older than that. In particular, I have been thinking of the young women from my journalism classes in Oklahoma about 15 years ago.
That generation had its own musical idols, of course, but it has had a certain connection with the next generation, too. I suppose there is always such an overlap in musical tastes from one generation to the next — although I would like to believe (as I suppose everyone would) that there will always be a segment of the population that will be drawn to the music on which I was raised.
Anyway, one of the young women from one of those classes observed on Facebook that she was "bummed" about Winehouse's death — but she did not say she was surprised.
And it really is hard — for me, at least — to act surprised. Yes, it is tragic. But it wasn't a surprise. With Winehouse's history of drug and alcohol abuse, how could it be a surprise to anyone?
Presumably, there will be an autopsy to determine what it was that killed her although it won't be scheduled until at least tomorrow. That should answer all — or, at least, most — of the questions that are raised by the death of one so young.
I guess most of us have our suspicions about what the cause will turn out to be. But, unless it turns out to be foul play, the cause isn't as important as the fact that my generation and the ones that have followed are linked in another way now, too.
Actually, it isn't so new for people like that ex–student I mentioned earlier. When she was in school, Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, took his own life at the age of 27. That was her introduction to the 27 Club.
And, while people my age and older like to think it was the musical stars of our generation who originated the 27 Club, as I wrote here nearly a year ago, the club appears to have its roots in the 19th century.
Yes, Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison brought attention to the 27 Club and made it appear to be more than an ironic coincidence that they should all die at the same age. Clearly, it isn't new for us, either.
(Maybe it was new when our great–great–grandparents were young lovers.)
For most of those in my goddaughter's age group, though, this is something new. And perhaps that is the ultimate purpose of the 27 Club — to remind us how fragile and fleeting life can be.
Parents would like to spare their children the pain and ugliness of the world, but they know deep down that they can't do that.
Amy Winehouse's life story is a reminder that there are no guarantees.
"A broom is drearily sweeping up The broken pieces of yesterday's life Somewhere a queen is weeping Somewhere a king has no wife And the wind, it cries Mary."
Jimi Hendrix The Wind Cries Mary
I guess you could say next month will be the 40th anniversary of the birth of the "27 Club."
What's that? You don't know what the "27 Club" — or, as it is also known, the "Forever 27 Club" — is?
Well, it isn't really a club. To put it as succinctly as possible, it's a somewhat informal grouping of famous musicians who died at the tender age of 27.
It has been observed, when the subject of the "27 Club" has come up, that people can and do die at every possible age, but it is unusual, to say the least, for so many well–known people in any profession to die at such a young age.
I suppose the "club" began on July 3, 1969. On that day, I guess, much of the world was anticipating the historic flight of Apollo 11 that was only a few weeks away. But Brian Jones, one of the charter members of the Rolling Stones, drowned in his swimming pool on that occasion. He was 27 years old.
One isn't enough to form a club, though, which brings me to September 18, the 40th anniversary of the death of Jimi Hendrix in London.
Hendrix also was 27 years old when, on Sept. 18, 1970, he consumed alcohol and sleeping pills — and then choked on his own vomit. Over the years, I heard a lot of things. I heard it was suicide. I heard it was accidental, that Hendrix was unfamiliar with the medication's dosages in foreign countries.
Last year, a "roadie" for the 1960s pop group the Animals published a book in which he claimed that Hendrix's manager admitted killing Hendrix. But the plausibility of that claim came into question when it was revealed that his manager wasn't even in London on the day Hendrix died. Apparently, he was in Spain.
Well, whatever the truth was, Jimi Hendrix died on Sept. 18, 1970. And two famous popular musicians were dead at the age of 27 within 18 months.
I vaguely remember hearing news reports of Hendrix's death at the time. But I really have no memory of any mention of the "27 Club."
If there wasn't talk of a "27 Club" after Joplin died, it may have begun in earnest following the death on July 3, 1971, of the 27–year–old lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison. Morrison, too, may have been a victim of heroin, but he died in France, where medical examiners were not compelled at that time (French law may have changed in 39 years) to require autopsies if they found no evidence of foul play.
And, in fact, the medical examiner claimed that no such evidence was found at Morrison's death scene so no autopsy was performed. And the actual cause of his death has remained shrouded in mystery ever since.
(Ironically, following Jones' death, Morrison published a poem that was written for Jones, and Hendrix dedicated a song to him on American TV. Another of his contemporaries, Pete Townshend of the Who — who is still living — also wrote a poem for Jones.)
But, by that time — or, certainly, a short time later — people began speaking of the "27 Club." It has been reported that the sister of Nirvana's lead singer, Kurt Cobain, has said that her brother spoke, when he was a child, of wanting to join the "27 Club."
Cobain would have been a child in the 1970s. And, in April 1994, he did join the club, committing suicide a little more than a month after his 27th birthday.
Some people have resisted including Cobain since he deliberately took his own life, but the fact is that he died at the age of 27 and he was the lead singer of what may have been the most popular band in America at the time of his death. I have never heard any conditional circumstances mentioned for being included in the club other than the fact that a person must be a musician and must die while he/she is 27.
Actually, if we're going to be technical about this, the so–called "27 Club" appears to have begun more than three–quarters of a century before Jones and Hendrix died.
In 1892, a pioneering Brazilian composer named Alexandre Levy died at the age of 27. He merged classical music with Brazilian folk music. The cause of his death remains unknown.
And many other musicians — all, to a certain extent, famous although none as well known as the first five I mentioned — have died at the age of 27 since that time. Bluesman Robert Johnson, for example, died at 27 more than three decades before Brian Jones did.
Unofficially, I guess Johnson really was the first member of the club. He was a performer, after all, and there are recordings of his performances that still exist. Maybe he was overlooked because of the segregated world in which he lived.
"Pigpen" McKiernan, one of the founders of the Grateful Dead, was 27 when he died. So were Peter Ham, the leader of the group Badfinger; Gary Thain, Uriah Heep's ex–bassist; and many others.
It's a bigger club than you might have thought.
A much smaller club, however, is made up of those who, while they may have died young, left something significant behind (besides compositions and recordings) through which they could continue to influence future generations.
Less than a month before he died, Hendrix opened such a place that could mold and promote the performers of the future. As Ben Sisario reported today in the New York Times, Electric Lady Studios, which was founded by Hendrix on Aug. 26, 1970, still exists, even though most of New York's big–name studios have closed their doors for one reason or another.
And Sisario points out that, in addition to housing tapes from Hendrix's studio sessions there, Electric Lady has had many famous performers record there, including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder.
I'm inclined to believe that no one — and I suspect that includes Hendrix himself — thought Hendrix would be dead less than four weeks after Electric Lady opened.
But I think he would be pleased to know it has existed longer than he did.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
