Few who have ever seen Janis Joplin perform on television or film (or those lucky enough to have seen her sing in person) will have a easy time forgetting her. She sang a mix bag of originals and old blues numbers, some of them like "Summer Time" by the Gershwin brothers, dating as far back as the 1920s.
But perhaps one of the songs she was most famous for was Big Mama Thornton's "Ball And Chain". I'm not sure if the footage I remember was from her performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1968 or another concert, but what I can be sure of was how simply incredible she was. Sometimes it was almost painful to watch Janis Joplin singing in that you felt like you were intruding on someone's personal grief.
As I remember, this concert was one of those occasions, and with each passing song it felt like she was revealing a little more of her soul to the audience. When she sang "Piece Of My Heart", it felt like she was pleading with someone, anyone, to love her enough to take care of her, no matter what else the song might mean. By the time she got to "Ball And Chain" the plea and cry for help and loving was so raw she could have been singing the phone book and you would have wept in empathy for her.
Janis never learned how to protect herself from her audience. So great was her need for affection and approval, she let them swallow her whole. Perhaps in a kinder world she would have some sort of chance of success without the accompanying viciousness, but here she didn't have a hope of surviving.
There are a lot of reasons why Big Mama Thornton would dedicate a performance of her own song "Ball And Chain" to Janis Joplin. I'd like to think it was in recognition of her struggle with her demons, and for gracing the world with her interpretations of Big Mama's songs.
Hearing Big Mama's dedicating a performance of "Ball And Chain" to Janis on the disc Big Mama Thornton put out as part of the Vanguard Visionaries series of discs on Vanguard records you can tell how much Thornton appreciated Janis' version of her song. Thornton, of course, was an amazing singer in her own right, just as fiery and passionate as Joplin. If ever there were, any one woman down through the years who could understand what Janis had experienced it was Big Mama.
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