Museum Musica

USA, 1971, blues rock

Janis Joplin – Pearl: Ms. Joplin just couldn’t live long enough to see her second album released. Talk about a rise and crash! Well, what about this one? A lot of convincing covers and a couple originals, including the silly a capella ditty, “Mercedes Benz”. I actually think she’s got the best “Me and Bobby McGee” out there, too. What haunts me about this album is that one of the tracks is an instrumental because Janis died before she could record the vocals. So they just kept it as-is, a testament to her untimely death.