Janis Joplin: 'There was no-one like her'

Published5 October 2020Image source, Getty ImagesBy Vincent DowdArts correspondent, BBC NewsIt'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 4 October, 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.Her biographer Alice Echols agrees but thinks there are other important influences too. Image source, Getty Images"You might say that musically Janis had very big ears - by which I mean she admired a whole sp...