Janis Joplin's screaming soulful voice in many ways is a personification of the Flower Power Era (along with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Grace Slick and many others). She came to symbolize energy of the Psychedelic, Haight Ashbury, love beads, love ins, free love, flower children, black light posters and incense, expansion of consciousness, spiritualism soaked in the unusual drug idealism of the late 1960's. It was a time of bright hope and optimism and the shedding of many social-psychological-sexual traditions that went sour.

Janis came on this scene with a singing style not heard before on the playlists of white American radio stations. Her singing was more like that of Aretha Franklin and other blues/gospel singers than the typical white girl songstress. However, her greatest influence came from earlier female blues singers such as Odetta, Memphis Minnie, and particularly Bessie Smith for whom, upon discovering she had been buried in an unmarked grave, Janis provided a headstone in August 1970, just two months before she herself passed away.


She died on October 4th 1970 at the age of 27 due to a heroin overdose. She is a member of the "27 Club," a group composed of musicians who all died at the age of 27, along with other artists including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones.