Podcasts about Robert Johnson

Here in Episode 145 of the No Name Music Cast, it is Joy's turn to pick the topic and she chooses to talk about forgotten musicians.We cover music from Robert Johnson, Bo Diddley and Screaming Jay Hawkins to name only a few.We also cover The Cheesecake Factory, John Deere Hats, Bass Pro Shops and Hit Clips!And we are excited about the new Beatles song 'Now and Then'!https://www.facebook.com/NoNameMusicCast/

Pacific St Blues & AmericanaNovember 26, 2023 - Thanksgiving 2023 In this Spotlight Show, we examine the Music and Legacy of Stevie Ray Vaughan.If you enjoyed this podcast, we have similar Spotlight Shows on Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, Willie Dixon, The Folk & Blues Roots of Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy, The Everly Brothers, Eric Clapton, John Hiatt, Robert Johnson, Buddy Holly, The RnB Roots of The Who, BB King, and more...www.podomatic.com/podcasts/KIWRblues1. Albert King / Ask Me No Questions - Who is Stevie2. Howlin' Wolf / Tell Me3. Elmore James / The Sky is Crying4. Earl King / Trick Bag (Come On Parts 1 & 2) 5. Stevie Ray Vaughan / Come On Part 3 6. Freddie King / Hideaway (John Mayall, Beano Cover) 7. Jimi Hendrix / Little Wing 8. Johnny Winter w/ Tommy Shannon / Hustle Down in Texas 9. Marc Benno & the Nightcrawlers / 10. Jimmie Vaughan & Lou Ann Barton / In the Middle of the Night 11. ZZ Top / Lowdown in the Streets (The Rome Inn) 12. Eric Johnson / Zap 13. The Fabulous Thunderbirds / Powerful Stuff14. Larry Davis / Texas Flood15. Buddy Guy / Mary Had a Little Lamb16. David Bowie / Let's Dance17. Ally Venable / Love18. Corey Stevens / Lenny19. Otis Rush / Double Trouble20. WC Clark / Cold Shot21. Jimmie Wilson & His All Stars / Tin Pan Alley 22. Melvin Taylor / Voodoo Chile, Slight Return23. Los Lonely Boys / Scuttl' Buttin' 

Interview begins @ 4:00 In this episode of "The Sacred Speaks," embark on an exploratory journey with Dr. Stephen Aizenstat, diving into the depths of the inner self. Our dialogue begins with the concept of the inner journey, ignited by curiosity, as seen through the lens of Dr. Aizenstat. A masterful storyteller, he intertwines compelling narratives from both his personal and professional realms, offering a glimpse into his distinctive worldview. Our conversation reveals the notion of 'genius' residing in each individual, transcending the bounds of the extraordinary. Dr. Aizenstat shares enlightening stories that demonstrate how engaging with our imagination can propel us beyond mere rationality, leading us into a life imbued with soulfulness and fulfillment. We confront the nature of resistance, both within ourselves and in others, discussing how a nondefensive, curious approach can pave the way for deeper understanding and personal growth. Dr. Aizenstat's methodology, marked by compassion and openness, provides a novel perspective on personal evolution. As we delve further, we examine the influence of depth psychology on Dr. Aizenstat's work, especially his interaction with inner figures and the transformative power of genuine curiosity. He champions a co-creative journey with these inner entities, illustrating how exploration and engagement can alleviate discomfort and enrich our inner world. A memorable segment of our discussion highlights Dr. Aizenstat's encounter with Joseph Campbell at Esalen, marking the beginning of a significant friendship. He recounts a fascinating story about Campbell's meeting with George Lucas, a pivotal moment that shaped the narrative of Star Wars, exemplifying the exploration of shadow and archetypes. Additionally, we explore the personification of emotions and the inner world, a central element of Dr. Aizenstat's approach. The episode culminates with an insightful discussion on the four quadrants of his Creative Matrix: Earth, Mind, Machine, and Universe, shedding light on the interplay of these elements in our lives. https://dreamtending.com Bio: Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder and Chancellor Emeritus of Pacifica Graduate Institute, Dream Tending, and the Academy of Imagination. For more than 35 years, he has explored the power of dreams through depth psychology and has devoted his life to understanding the profound wisdom and healing power that exist within each of us and has helped thousands of students, individuals, businesses, and organizations through the techniques revealed in The Imagination Matrix. His work centers on the insight that, through our dreams and imagination, we can access limitless creativity, innovation, improved relationships, and, ultimately, our human potential. He has collaborated with Joseph Campbell, Marion Woodman, Robert Johnson, James Hillman, and Native elders worldwide. He conducts dreamwork and imagination seminars throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. Website for The Sacred Speaks: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com WATCH: YouTube for The Sacred Speaks https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ @thesacredspeaks Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/ Brought to you by: https://www.thecenterforhas.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com

In this episode I speak with world-renowned Professor of Depth Psychology, Imagination Specialist, author, and founder of Dream Tending... Dr. Stephen Aizenstat. Stephen and I discuss his latest book, 'The Imagination Matrix: How to Access the Greatest Power You Have for Creativity, Connection, and Purpose'.. This book details how we, as humans, can use techiniques to gain deeper access into the imaginal realm to increase our knowledge and growth. We begin our interview talking about his relationship with the legendary Joseph Campbell, who Stephen befriended during lectures given to a young Stephen and his friends, We then talk about the nature of imagination; its origins, it's functions, and how it could be our greatest ally. Steven also shares with us some of his personal stories which led to him unlocking his innate genius and imaginal power. Drop In!www.dreamtending.comDr. Stephen Aizenstat Bio:Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder of Pacifica Graduate Institute, Dream Tending, and the Academy of Imagination. For more than 35 years, he has explored the power of dreams through depth psychology. He has collaborated with Joseph Campbell, Marion Woodman, Robert Johnson, James Hillman, and Native elders worldwide. He conducts dreamwork and imagination seminars throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. For more, visit dreamtending.com. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Lets talk turkey. This is our Thanksgiving show."

In 1973 Richard Lester's rollicking romp The Three Musketeers was released - subtitled 'The Queen's Diamonds' (The Four Musketeers was filmed at the same time and followed a year after) the movie starred Michael York as D'Artagnan, Oliver Reed as Athos, Frank Finlay as Porthos and Richard Chamberlain as Aramis. Perhaps most memorable was the pairing of Raquel Welch with Spike Milligan, as Monsieur and Madame Bonacieux - she the close confidante to the Queen of France and he an easily-bought informant to the villainous Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston). The movie also featured Lester regular Roy Kinnear, the (recently) late Joss Ackland, Faye Dunaway and Christopher Lee. It's a joyous adaptation of the Dumas novel with a script that pops and fizzes courtesy of Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser. Featuring the stylistic flourishes that always mark out a good Richard Lester film, plus realistic depictions of early 17th Century Paris - the squalor as well as the wealth - edge-of-your-seat sword fights and shot through with bawdy humour, The Three Musketeers was a commercial and critical triumph upon release and it is the topic of this week's edition of Goon Pod. Joining Tyler once again are the hosts of Still Any Good podcast - Christopher Webb and Robert Johnson, live from a shed somewhere in the Antipodes during a noisy Guy Fawkes celebration - appropriate for discussing a film which culminates in a grand fireworks display! Still Any Good can be found here: https://linktr.ee/stillanygood

Seriah is joined by SuperSaxonMan, Matt Festa, and Katie of the Night to ask questions. Topics include paranormal experiences and pro wrestlers, Chris Jericho, a paranormal show “Chamber of Horrors” by three female WWE wrestlers, Chris Stratlander, Andre the Giant's appearance as Bigfoot in the TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man”, a huge pair of pants, a telepathic message from a Sasquatch, the “Survivor Man” episode where the host encountered Bigfoot, UFO contactees, Elijah Burke, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, liminality, the Seth material, Jane Roberts, past lives, the second coming of Jesus Christ, Patrick Harper's “Daemonic Reality”, the possibility of a multiverse, “Forbidden Archelogy” by Michael Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, mathematics and biology, Jeffrey Kripal, George Hansen, Kenneth Ring, “The Omega Project”, Jenny Randles, “Mind Monsters”, the OZ factor, co-creating haunted locations, David Weatherly and a plantation entity that existed but was fictional, colleges and ghosts and urban legends, egregores, Ouija boards, whispers in one's ear, scientific study of the paranormal, Sarah Lee Black, high strangeness, pk/psi laboratory experiments, Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant, Bruce Dickinson's(of Iron Maiden) “Crowley” movie, a strange experience with a Lyft driver, horror movies and things “coming out of the TV”, fear and poltergeist activity, a childhood experience with a scary movie, “The Ring” film, Cipher from “The Matrix” film, childhood memories of toys moving around, presumptions of evil in the paranormal, H.P. Lovecraft, belief vs fear of the unknown, “The Magnus Archives” horror fiction podcast, Strange Realities conference, Seriah's autobiography and its cover, objective vs subjective experiences with the paranormal, metal bands as an analogy for understanding vs perception, the Mothman phenomena, Skinwalker Ranch, John Keel's “The Mothman Prophecies”, Indrid Cold, Woodrow Durenberger, Indiana Jones/Kolchack the Night Stalker, Whitley Strieber, graveyard experiences, sacred spots, Cornell University, Ithica NY, cemeteries as safe spaces, Robert Johnson, the Alpine Portal, and much more! This is some absolutely fascinating discussion!https://www.youtube.com/c/KatieoftheNightThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4656375/advertisement

"This week in 1938 Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann invented LSD. It became a force in the 60s and gave us a new genre of music. Psychedelic."

Are you ready to tap into a collective purpose so vital, so vibrant, so resonant in the world of today. Tune in for an inspiring discussion with Stephen Aizenstat, PhD on his new #book The Imagination Matrix: How to Access the Greatest Power You Have for Creativity, Connection, and Purpose. #MomentsWithMarianne with host Marianne Pestana airs in the Southern California area on KMET 1490AM & 98.1 FM, an ABC Talk News Radio Affiliate! Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder of Pacifica Graduate Institute, Dream Tending, and the Academy of Imagination. For more than 35 years, he has explored the power of dreams through depth psychology. He has collaborated with Joseph Campbell, Marion Woodman, Robert Johnson, James Hillman, and Native elders worldwide. He conducts dreamwork and imagination seminars throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. https://dreamtending.comFor more show information visit: www.MariannePestana.com #bookclub #readinglist #books #bookish #author #authorinterview #KMET1490AM #radioshow #booklover #mustread #reading #bookstagram #TheImaginationMatrix #StephenAizenstat #psychology #creativity #connection #purpose #SoundsTrue

GET‌ ‌EVERY‌ ‌EPISODE‌ ‌AD FREE PLUS BONUS‌ ‌CONTENT‌ ‌AT:‌ ‌‌www.patreon.com/crackpotpodcast‌ From Badfinger's "Without You" to the infamous "Curse of the Ninth" in classical music, and the haunting tales of "Gloomy Sunday" and "Insha Ji Utho," each melody carries a story of heartbreak, misfortune, and, in some cases, an inexplicable curse. Uncover the behind-the-scenes tragedies of musicians like Robert Johnson, and the eerie coincidences surrounding the Curse of the Ninth. Discover how a seemingly harmless karaoke performance of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" can lead to deadly consequences in the Philippines. Join us on a journey through the dark side of music, where notes intertwine with fate.   www.crackpotpodcast.com  

"Can you give yourself a nickname. Michael Jackson wrote a letter to Mtv this week in 1991 that asked them to call him The King of Pop. Some did many laughed. That said this week is a long list of musician nicknames and where they came from. "

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Bert Dievert  | World is Gone Wrong  | Pony Blues  |  | Half Deaf Clatch  | Can't Do Right (For Doing Wrong)  | A Road Less Travelled | Chris O  | I Need Your Love so Bad (feat. Didi Van Fritz)  | Wailin' & Raggin' the Blues | Pinetop Perkins and Willie 'Big Eyes' Smith  | You'd Better Slow Down  | Joined At The Hip [Grammy winner 2011] | Charles -Cow Cow- Davenport  | Back in the Alley  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 | Josh White  | Live the Life  | The Elektra Years  |  | Fiona Boyes  | Mama's Sanctified Amp  | Fiona Boyes Box & Dice promo | Memphis Slim  | Two Of A Kind  | All Kinds Of Blues 1961 | Jake Leg Jug Band  | Mouthful o' Jam  | Live At The Audley Theatre [with chatter] | Andres Roots And Raul Terep  | Bullfrog Medley  | Trad.Alt.Blues  |  | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Easy On Your Heel  | Los Angeles Blues (1969) | Robert Johnson  | Ramblin' On My Mind  | The Complete Recordings;  The Centennial Collection | Mark Searcy  | Grapetown Rail  | Ground Zero  |  | Adam Franklin  | Can't Be Satisfied  | 112 Guildford Street  |  | Andy Cohen  | Seldom Seen Slim  | Road Be Kind  |  | Big Bill Broonzy  | Hollerin' Blues  | Four Classic Albums Plus - CD Two

Last week it was Heaven..this week.......you guest it the devil down below! ROBERT JOHNSON, ART KASSAL & HIS KASSALS IN THE AIR, GID TANNER and some fun reefer songs! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/american-grooves-hour/support

Las teorías de conspiración y leyendas urbanas inundan el mundo de la música, especialmente el rock. Se habla de pactos diabólicos, como en la leyenda de Robert Johnson, muertes misteriosas y supuestas resurrecciones, como la de Elvis Presley o Tupac Shakur. La controvertida "muerte" de Paul McCartney, reemplazado por un doble, es un clásico. Las conexiones ocultas en las letras y portadas de los álbumes, como la "satanicidad" de Led Zeppelin, alimentan estas teorías. Hoy nos adentraremos en otras bastante menos conocidas pero igual de apasionantes. Y además: La maldición de la momia, con Verónica Fernández Querido alumno, te estamos engañando, con Daniel Arias Aranda Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Host Michael Taft talks with “Boss Jungian of Planet Earth” Stephen Aizenstat about diving into the depths of our authentic creativity, finding purpose in the imaginal, engaging "an imagination that opens from the inside out," the perils and promise of AI with regards to the human imagination, and asks the question: is working with the imagination simply a narcissistic bourgeois indulgence in this time of unprecedented worldwide existential peril, or might the imaginal actually be a source of our salvation?Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder of Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences. He is a world renowned Professor of Depth Psychology, an imagination specialist and has collaborated with many notable masters in the field of depth psychology including Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, and Robert Johnson.Dr. Aizenstat's DreamTending siteYou can support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"This week is an interview with authors Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel about their new book, Bob Dylan Mixing up the Medicine. I ask them about the highlights in Dylans career. "

Year 4 of The Wind will be a series called "Devil Music". Investigating the Satanic Panic, the crossroads and subliminal messaging. The devil is in the details. Coming soon.

Welcome! Today is episode three in The Grail Series, and in the spirit of All Hallows' Eve, we begin our exploration of the feminine figures of the Arthurian and Grail legends with the enigmatic Morgan Le Fay. In discovering her various portrayals through the myriad versions of the Arthurian canon, we situate her shifting roles among the qualities of mystery, hospitality, and justice (discussed in episode two), as well as the six feminine figures of the psyche as proposed by Robert Johnson. A complex yet inspirational female, the otherworldly and formidable Morgan Le Fay emerges as a potent figure in her own right, one with a foot firmly in both worlds. Musical selection: Lady in Black by Farrell Wooten Discover the work of Caitlin and John Matthews at https://www.hallowquest.org.uk --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lori-green2/support

Episode 169 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Piece of My Heart" and the short, tragic life of Janis Joplin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There are two Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two . For information on Janis Joplin I used three biographies -- Scars of Sweet Paradise by Alice Echols, Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, and Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. I also referred to the chapter '“Being Good Isn't Always Easy": Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul' in Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton. Some information on Bessie Smith came from Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay, a book I can't really recommend given the lack of fact-checking, and Bessie by Chris Albertson. I also referred to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis And the best place to start with Joplin's music is this five-CD box, which contains both Big Brother and the Holding Company albums she was involved in, plus her two studio albums and bonus tracks. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode contains discussion of drug addiction and overdose, alcoholism, mental illness, domestic abuse, child abandonment, and racism. If those subjects are likely to cause you upset, you may want to check the transcript or skip this one rather than listen. Also, a subject I should probably say a little more about in this intro because I know I have inadvertently caused upset to at least one listener with this in the past. When it comes to Janis Joplin, it is *impossible* to talk about her without discussing her issues with her weight and self-image. The way I write often involves me paraphrasing the opinions of the people I'm writing about, in a mode known as close third person, and sometimes that means it can look like I am stating those opinions as my own, and sometimes things I say in that mode which *I* think are obviously meant in context to be critiques of those attitudes can appear to others to be replicating them. At least once, I have seriously upset a fat listener when talking about issues related to weight in this manner. I'm going to try to be more careful here, but just in case, I'm going to say before I begin that I think fatphobia is a pernicious form of bigotry, as bad as any other form of bigotry. I'm fat myself and well aware of how systemic discrimination affects fat people. I also think more generally that the pressure put on women to look a particular way is pernicious and disgusting in ways I can't even begin to verbalise, and causes untold harm. If *ANYTHING* I say in this episode comes across as sounding otherwise, that's because I haven't expressed myself clearly enough. Like all people, Janis Joplin had negative characteristics, and at times I'm going to say things that are critical of those. But when it comes to anything to do with her weight or her appearance, if *anything* I say sounds critical of her, rather than of a society that makes women feel awful for their appearance, it isn't meant to. Anyway, on with the show. On January the nineteenth, 1943, Seth Joplin typed up a letter to his wife Dorothy, which read “I wish to tender my congratulations on the anniversary of your successful completion of your production quota for the nine months ending January 19, 1943. I realize that you passed through a period of inflation such as you had never before known—yet, in spite of this, you met your goal by your supreme effort during the early hours of January 19, a good three weeks ahead of schedule.” As you can probably tell from that message, the Joplin family were a strange mixture of ultraconformism and eccentricity, and those two opposing forces would dominate the personality of their firstborn daughter for the whole of her life.  Seth Joplin was a respected engineer at Texaco, where he worked for forty years, but he had actually dropped out of engineering school before completing his degree. His favourite pastime when he wasn't at work was to read -- he was a voracious reader -- and to listen to classical music, which would often move him to tears, but he had also taught himself to make bathtub gin during prohibition, and smoked cannabis. Dorothy, meanwhile, had had the possibility of a singing career before deciding to settle down and become a housewife, and was known for having a particularly beautiful soprano voice. Both were, by all accounts, fiercely intelligent people, but they were also as committed as anyone to the ideals of the middle-class family even as they chafed against its restrictions. Like her mother, young Janis had a beautiful soprano voice, and she became a soloist in her church choir, but after the age of six, she was not encouraged to sing much. Dorothy had had a thyroid operation which destroyed her singing voice, and the family got rid of their piano soon after (different sources say that this was either because Dorothy found her daughter's singing painful now that she couldn't sing herself, or because Seth was upset that his wife could no longer sing. Either seems plausible.) Janis was pushed to be a high-achiever -- she was given a library card as soon as she could write her name, and encouraged to use it, and she was soon advanced in school, skipping a couple of grades. She was also by all accounts a fiercely talented painter, and her parents paid for art lessons. From everything one reads about her pre-teen years, she was a child prodigy who was loved by everyone and who was clearly going to be a success of some kind. Things started to change when she reached her teenage years. Partly, this was just her getting into rock and roll music, which her father thought a fad -- though even there, she differed from her peers. She loved Elvis, but when she heard "Hound Dog", she loved it so much that she tracked down a copy of Big Mama Thornton's original, and told her friends she preferred that: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog"] Despite this, she was still also an exemplary student and overachiever. But by the time she turned fourteen, things started to go very wrong for her. Partly this was just down to her relationship with her father changing -- she adored him, but he became more distant from his daughters as they grew into women. But also, puberty had an almost wholly negative effect on her, at least by the standards of that time and place. She put on weight (which, again, I do not think is a negative thing, but she did, and so did everyone around her), she got a bad case of acne which didn't ever really go away, and she also didn't develop breasts particularly quickly -- which, given that she was a couple of years younger than the other people in the same classes at school, meant she stood out even more. In the mid-sixties, a doctor apparently diagnosed her as having a "hormone imbalance" -- something that got to her as a possible explanation for why she was, to quote from a letter she wrote then, "not really a woman or enough of one or something." She wondered if "maybe something as simple as a pill could have helped out or even changed that part of me I call ME and has been so messed up.” I'm not a doctor and even if I were, diagnosing historical figures is an unethical thing to do, but certainly the acne, weight gain, and mental health problems she had are all consistent with PCOS, the most common endocrine disorder among women, and it seems likely given what the doctor told her that this was the cause. But at the time all she knew was that she was different, and that in the eyes of her fellow students she had gone from being pretty to being ugly. She seems to have been a very trusting, naive, person who was often the brunt of jokes but who desperately needed to be accepted, and it became clear that her appearance wasn't going to let her fit into the conformist society she was being brought up in, while her high intelligence, low impulse control, and curiosity meant she couldn't even fade into the background. This left her one other option, and she decided that she would deliberately try to look and act as different from everyone else as possible. That way, it would be a conscious choice on her part to reject the standards of her fellow pupils, rather than her being rejected by them. She started to admire rebels. She became a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose music combined the country music she'd grown up hearing in Texas, the R&B she liked now, and the rebellious nature she was trying to cultivate: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] When Lewis' career was derailed by his marriage to his teenage cousin, Joplin wrote an angry letter to Time magazine complaining that they had mistreated him in their coverage. But as with so many people of her generation, her love of rock and roll music led her first to the blues and then to folk, and she soon found herself listening to Odetta: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] One of her first experiences of realising she could gain acceptance from her peers by singing was when she was hanging out with the small group of Bohemian teenagers she was friendly with, and sang an Odetta song, mimicking her voice exactly. But young Janis Joplin was listening to an eclectic range of folk music, and could mimic more than just Odetta. For all that her later vocal style was hugely influenced by Odetta and by other Black singers like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, her friends in her late teens and early twenties remember her as a vocal chameleon with an achingly pure soprano, who would more often than Odetta be imitating the great Appalachian traditional folk singer Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Lord Randall"] She was, in short, trying her best to become a Beatnik, despite not having any experience of that subculture other than what she read in books -- though she *did* read about them in books, devouring things like Kerouac's On The Road. She came into conflict with her mother, who didn't understand what was happening to her daughter, and who tried to get family counselling to understand what was going on. Her father, who seemed to relate more to Janis, but who was more quietly eccentric, put an end to that, but Janis would still for the rest of her life talk about how her mother had taken her to doctors who thought she was going to end up "either in jail or an insane asylum" to use her words. From this point on, and for the rest of her life, she was torn between a need for approval from her family and her peers, and a knowledge that no matter what she did she couldn't fit in with normal societal expectations. In high school she was a member of the Future Nurses of America, the Future Teachers of America, the Art Club, and Slide Rule Club, but she also had a reputation as a wild girl, and as sexually active (even though by all accounts at this point she was far less so than most of the so-called "good girls" – but her later activity was in part because she felt that if she was going to have that reputation anyway she might as well earn it). She also was known to express radical opinions, like that segregation was wrong, an opinion that the other students in her segregated Texan school didn't even think was wrong, but possibly some sort of sign of mental illness. Her final High School yearbook didn't contain a single other student's signature. And her initial choice of university, Lamar State College of Technology, was not much better. In the next town over, and attended by many of the same students, it had much the same attitudes as the school she'd left. Almost the only long-term effect her initial attendance at university had on her was a negative one -- she found there was another student at the college who was better at painting. Deciding that if she wasn't going to be the best at something she didn't want to do it at all, she more or less gave up on painting at that point. But there was one positive. One of the lecturers at Lamar was Francis Edward "Ab" Abernethy, who would in the early seventies go on to become the Secretary and Editor of the Texas Folklore Society, and was also a passionate folk musician, playing double bass in string bands. Abernethy had a great collection of blues 78s. and it was through this collection that Janis first discovered classic blues, and in particular Bessie Smith: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues"] A couple of episodes ago, we had a long look at the history of the music that now gets called "the blues" -- the music that's based around guitars, and generally involves a solo male vocalist, usually Black during its classic period. At the time that music was being made though it wouldn't have been thought of as "the blues" with no modifiers by most people who were aware of it. At the start, even the songs they were playing weren't thought of as blues by the male vocalist/guitarists who played them -- they called the songs they played "reels". The music released by people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold and so on was thought of as blues music, and people would understand and agree with a phrase like "Lonnie Johnson is a blues singer", but it wasn't the first thing people thought of when they talked about "the blues". Until relatively late -- probably some time in the 1960s -- if you wanted to talk about blues music made by Black men with guitars and only that music, you talked about "country blues". If you thought about "the blues", with no qualifiers, you thought about a rather different style of music, one that white record collectors started later to refer to as "classic blues" to differentiate it from what they were now calling "the blues". Nowadays of course if you say "classic blues", most people will think you mean Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, people who were contemporary at the time those white record collectors were coming up with their labels, and so that style of music gets referred to as "vaudeville blues", or as "classic female blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] What we just heard was the first big blues hit performed by a Black person, from 1920, and as we discussed in the episode on "Crossroads" that revolutionised the whole record industry when it came out. The song was performed by Mamie Smith, a vaudeville performer, and was originally titled "Harlem Blues" by its writer, Perry Bradford, before he changed the title to "Crazy Blues" to get it to a wider audience. Bradford was an important figure in the vaudeville scene, though other than being the credited writer of "Keep A-Knockin'" he's little known these days. He was a Black musician and grew up playing in minstrel shows (the history of minstrelsy is a topic for another day, but it's more complicated than the simple image of blackface that we are aware of today -- though as with many "more complicated than that" things it is, also the simple image of blackface we're aware of). He was the person who persuaded OKeh records that there would be a market for music made by Black people that sounded Black (though as we're going to see in this episode, what "sounding Black" means is a rather loaded question). "Crazy Blues" was the result, and it was a massive hit, even though it was marketed specifically towards Black listeners: [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] The big stars of the early years of recorded blues were all making records in the shadow of "Crazy Blues", and in the case of its very biggest stars, they were working very much in the same mould. The two most important blues stars of the twenties both got their start in vaudeville, and were both women. Ma Rainey, like Mamie Smith, first performed in minstrel shows, but where Mamie Smith's early records had her largely backed by white musicians, Rainey was largely backed by Black musicians, including on several tracks Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider"] Rainey's band was initially led by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most important men in American music, who we've talked about before in several episodes, including the last one. He was possibly the single most important figure in two different genres -- hokum music, when he, under the name "Georgia Tom" recorded "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red: [Excerpt: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That"] And of course gospel music, which to all intents and purposes he invented, and much of whose repertoire he wrote: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"] When Dorsey left Rainey's band, as we discussed right back in episode five, he was replaced by a female pianist, Lil Henderson. The blues was a woman's genre. And Ma Rainey was, by preference, a woman's woman, though she was married to a man: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Prove it on Me"] So was the biggest star of the classic blues era, who was originally mentored by Rainey. Bessie Smith, like Rainey, was a queer woman who had relationships with men but was far more interested in other women.  There were stories that Bessie Smith actually got her start in the business by being kidnapped by Ma Rainey, and forced into performing on the same bills as her in the vaudeville show she was touring in, and that Rainey taught Smith to sing blues in the process. In truth, Rainey mentored Smith more in stagecraft and the ways of the road than in singing, and neither woman was only a blues singer, though both had huge success with their blues records.  Indeed, since Rainey was already in the show, Smith was initially hired as a dancer rather than a singer, and she also worked as a male impersonator. But Smith soon branched out on her own -- from the beginning she was obviously a star. The great jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet later said of her "She had this trouble in her, this thing that would not let her rest sometimes, a meanness that came and took her over. But what she had was alive … Bessie, she just wouldn't let herself be; it seemed she couldn't let herself be." Bessie Smith was signed by Columbia Records in 1923, as part of the rush to find and record as many Black women blues singers as possible. Her first recording session produced "Downhearted Blues", which became, depending on which sources you read, either the biggest-selling blues record since "Crazy Blues" or the biggest-selling blues record ever, full stop, selling three quarters of a million copies in the six months after its release: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues"] Smith didn't make royalties off record sales, only making a flat fee, but she became the most popular Black performer of the 1920s. Columbia signed her to an exclusive contract, and she became so rich that she would literally travel between gigs on her own private train. She lived an extravagant life in every way, giving lavishly to her friends and family, but also drinking extraordinary amounts of liquor, having regular affairs, and also often physically or verbally attacking those around her. By all accounts she was not a comfortable person to be around, and she seemed to be trying to fit an entire lifetime into every moment. From 1923 through 1929 she had a string of massive hits. She recorded material in a variety of styles, including the dirty blues: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Empty Bed Blues] And with accompanists like Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, "Cold in Hand Blues"] But the music for which she became best known, and which sold the best, was when she sang about being mistreated by men, as on one of her biggest hits, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" -- and a warning here, I'm going to play a clip of the song, which treats domestic violence in a way that may be upsetting: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do"] That kind of material can often seem horrifying to today's listeners -- and quite correctly so, as domestic violence is a horrifying thing -- and it sounds entirely too excusing of the man beating her up for anyone to find it comfortable listening. But the Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has made a convincing case that while these records, and others by Smith's contemporaries, can't reasonably be considered to be feminist, they *are* at the very least more progressive than they now seem, in that they were, even if excusing it, pointing to a real problem which was otherwise left unspoken. And that kind of domestic violence and abuse *was* a real problem, including in Smith's own life. By all accounts she was terrified of her husband, Jack Gee, who would frequently attack her because of her affairs with other people, mostly women. But she was still devastated when he left her for a younger woman, not only because he had left her, but also because he kidnapped their adopted son and had him put into a care home, falsely claiming she had abused him. Not only that, but before Jack left her closest friend had been Jack's niece Ruby and after the split she never saw Ruby again -- though after her death Ruby tried to have a blues career as "Ruby Smith", taking her aunt's surname and recording a few tracks with Sammy Price, the piano player who worked with Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Ruby Smith with Sammy Price, "Make Me Love You"] The same month, May 1929, that Gee left her, Smith recorded what was to become her last big hit, and most well-known song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] And that could have been the theme for the rest of her life. A few months after that record came out, the Depression hit, pretty much killing the market for blues records. She carried on recording until 1931, but the records weren't selling any more. And at the same time, the talkies came in in the film industry, which along with the Depression ended up devastating the vaudeville audience. Her earnings were still higher than most, but only a quarter of what they had been a year or two earlier. She had one last recording session in 1933, produced by John Hammond for OKeh Records, where she showed that her style had developed over the years -- it was now incorporating the newer swing style, and featured future swing stars Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden in the backing band: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Gimme a Pigfoot"] Hammond was not hugely impressed with the recordings, preferring her earlier records, and they would be the last she would ever make. She continued as a successful, though no longer record-breaking, live act until 1937, when she and her common-law husband, Lionel Hampton's uncle Richard Morgan, were in a car crash. Morgan escaped, but Smith died of her injuries and was buried on October the fourth 1937. Ten thousand people came to her funeral, but she was buried in an unmarked grave -- she was still legally married to Gee, even though they'd been separated for eight years, and while he supposedly later became rich from songwriting royalties from some of her songs (most of her songs were written by other people, but she wrote a few herself) he refused to pay for a headstone for her. Indeed on more than one occasion he embezzled money that had been raised by other people to provide a headstone. Bessie Smith soon became Joplin's favourite singer of all time, and she started trying to copy her vocals. But other than discovering Smith's music, Joplin seems to have had as terrible a time at university as at school, and soon dropped out and moved back in with her parents. She went to business school for a short while, where she learned some secretarial skills, and then she moved west, going to LA where two of her aunts lived, to see if she could thrive better in a big West Coast city than she did in small-town Texas. Soon she moved from LA to Venice Beach, and from there had a brief sojourn in San Francisco, where she tried to live out her beatnik fantasies at a time when the beatnik culture was starting to fall apart. She did, while she was there, start smoking cannabis, though she never got a taste for that drug, and took Benzedrine and started drinking much more heavily than she had before. She soon lost her job, moved back to Texas, and re-enrolled at the same college she'd been at before. But now she'd had a taste of real Bohemian life -- she'd been singing at coffee houses, and having affairs with both men and women -- and soon she decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin. At this point, Austin was very far from the cultural centre it has become in recent decades, and it was still a straitlaced Texan town, but it was far less so than Port Arthur, and she soon found herself in a folk group, the Waller Creek Boys. Janis would play autoharp and sing, sometimes Bessie Smith covers, but also the more commercial country and folk music that was popular at the time, like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", a song that had originally been recorded by Wanda Jackson but at that time was a big hit for Dusty Springfield's group The Springfields: [Excerpt: The Waller Creek Boys, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"] But even there, Joplin didn't fit in comfortably. The venue where the folk jams were taking place was a segregated venue, as everywhere around Austin was. And she was enough of a misfit that the campus newspaper did an article on her headlined "She Dares to Be Different!", which read in part "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break out into song it will be handy." There was a small group of wannabe-Beatniks, including Chet Helms, who we've mentioned previously in the Grateful Dead episode, Gilbert Shelton, who went on to be a pioneer of alternative comics and create the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Shelton's partner in Rip-Off Press, Dave Moriarty, but for the most part the atmosphere in Austin was only slightly better for Janis than it had been in Port Arthur. The final straw for her came when in an annual charity fundraiser joke competition to find the ugliest man on campus, someone nominated her for the "award". She'd had enough of Texas. She wanted to go back to California. She and Chet Helms, who had dropped out of the university earlier and who, like her, had already spent some time on the West Coast, decided to hitch-hike together to San Francisco. Before leaving, she made a recording for her ex-girlfriend Julie Paul, a country and western musician, of a song she'd written herself. It's recorded in what many say was Janis' natural voice -- a voice she deliberately altered in performance in later years because, she would tell people, she didn't think there was room for her singing like that in an industry that already had Joan Baez and Judy Collins. In her early years she would alternate between singing like this and doing her imitations of Black women, but the character of Janis Joplin who would become famous never sang like this. It may well be the most honest thing that she ever recorded, and the most revealing of who she really was: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, "So Sad to Be Alone"] Joplin and Helms made it to San Francisco, and she started performing at open-mic nights and folk clubs around the Bay Area, singing in her Bessie Smith and Odetta imitation voice, and sometimes making a great deal of money by sounding different from the wispier-voiced women who were the norm at those venues. The two friends parted ways, and she started performing with two other folk musicians, Larry Hanks and Roger Perkins, and she insisted that they would play at least one Bessie Smith song at every performance: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, Larry Hanks, and Roger Perkins, "Black Mountain Blues (live in San Francisco)"] Often the trio would be joined by Billy Roberts, who at that time had just started performing the song that would make his name, "Hey Joe", and Joplin was soon part of the folk scene in the Bay Area, and admired by Dino Valenti, David Crosby, and Jerry Garcia among others. She also sang a lot with Jorma Kaukonnen, and recordings of the two of them together have circulated for years: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonnen, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] Through 1963, 1964, and early 1965 Joplin ping-ponged from coast to coast, spending time in the Bay Area, then Greenwich Village, dropping in on her parents then back to the Bay Area, and she started taking vast quantities of methamphetamine. Even before moving to San Francisco she had been an occasional user of amphetamines – at the time they were regularly prescribed to students as study aids during exam periods, and she had also been taking them to try to lose some of the weight she always hated. But while she was living in San Francisco she became dependent on the drug. At one point her father was worried enough about her health to visit her in San Francisco, where she managed to fool him that she was more or less OK. But she looked to him for reassurance that things would get better for her, and he couldn't give it to her. He told her about a concept that he called the "Saturday night swindle", the idea that you work all week so you can go out and have fun on Saturday in the hope that that will make up for everything else, but that it never does. She had occasional misses with what would have been lucky breaks -- at one point she was in a motorcycle accident just as record labels were interested in signing her, and by the time she got out of the hospital the chance had gone. She became engaged to another speed freak, one who claimed to be an engineer and from a well-off background, but she was becoming severely ill from what was by now a dangerous amphetamine habit, and in May 1965 she decided to move back in with her parents, get clean, and have a normal life. Her new fiance was going to do the same, and they were going to have the conformist life her parents had always wanted, and which she had always wanted to want. Surely with a husband who loved her she could find a way to fit in and just be normal. She kicked the addiction, and wrote her fiance long letters describing everything about her family and the new normal life they were going to have together, and they show her painfully trying to be optimistic about the future, like one where she described her family to him: "My mother—Dorothy—worries so and loves her children dearly. Republican and Methodist, very sincere, speaks in clichés which she really means and is very good to people. (She thinks you have a lovely voice and is terribly prepared to like you.) My father—richer than when I knew him and kind of embarrassed about it—very well read—history his passion—quiet and very excited to have me home because I'm bright and we can talk (about antimatter yet—that impressed him)! I keep telling him how smart you are and how proud I am of you.…" She went back to Lamar, her mother started sewing her a wedding dress, and for much of the year she believed her fiance was going to be her knight in shining armour. But as it happened, the fiance in question was described by everyone else who knew him as a compulsive liar and con man, who persuaded her father to give him money for supposed medical tests before the wedding, but in reality was apparently married to someone else and having a baby with a third woman. After the engagement was broken off, she started performing again around the coffeehouses in Austin and Houston, and she started to realise the possibilities of rock music for her kind of performance. The missing clue came from a group from Austin who she became very friendly with, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and the way their lead singer Roky Erickson would wail and yell: [Excerpt: The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me (live)"] If, as now seemed inevitable, Janis was going to make a living as a performer, maybe she should start singing rock music, because it seemed like there was money in it. There was even some talk of her singing with the Elevators. But then an old friend came to Austin from San Francisco with word from Chet Helms. A blues band had formed, and were looking for a singer, and they remembered her from the coffee houses. Would she like to go back to San Francisco and sing with them? In the time she'd been away, Helms had become hugely prominent in the San Francisco music scene, which had changed radically. A band from the area called the Charlatans had been playing a fake-Victorian saloon called the Red Dog in nearby Nevada, and had become massive with the people who a few years earlier had been beatniks: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "32-20"] When their residency at the Red Dog had finished, several of the crowd who had been regulars there had become a collective of sorts called the Family Dog, and Helms had become their unofficial leader. And there's actually a lot packed