Dear Editor: Historic Significance of Janis Joplin?

Editor:

Why would anybody support a performance that reminds us of Janis Joplin? She was into everything imaginable, totally self-destructive; and died alone drunk in a motel room! Somebody not to emulate!

A night with a real singer doing Linda Ronstadt would be an excellent idea. Her voice was terrific and she was a real professional and very pretty. She now has Parkinson’s disease and cannot sing, but she is somebody worth listening to in more ways than one – someone to be noticed again.

-S. Johnson
July 16, 2015
SAN GABRIEL

Editor’s Response to Ms. Johnson’s Diatribe:

Ms. Johnson … at first your letter ended up in our ‘special file’ otherwise known as the rubbish bin. But upon further discussion with a couple of colleagues, we decide to run your letter only with the intent of pointing out your argument is, at best, absurd, and at worst insulting to anyone who knows anything about music. Your letter is, as one illustrious writer noted: Apples and Rutabagas.

Janis Joplin was the most influential female singer of the 1960s. Your letter insults not only the two young women who portray the late Janis Joplin at the Pasadena Playhouse starting this week but the estate of Janis Poplin, et al.. Joplin died of a drug overdose, not alcohol. The overdose, I doubt, was planned. Perhaps the following sums up Joplin’s voice and influence best:

“In its new context, her voice can go through it’s almost impossible series of changes: laughing and crying in the same line, singing harmony with itself, cracking up, and finally, taking off into the breathtaking and suspenseful endings, a mind-blowing collage of sound patterns that make her now, more than ever, one of the really great gospel/blues singers of all time.” –David Dalton, 1970.

Yes, Linda Ronstadt was a wonderful singer too. However you cannot compare the two … It is, well, Apples and Rutabagas. The world was never the same after Janis hit the stage.

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