10 Legendary Artists That Never Saw Their Last Music Record Come Out

There's a good chance that most of us weren't really ready for what Janis Joplin was doing at the start of the '60s. Coming out of the bluesy tradition, her raspy voice on songs like Piece of My Heart just hinted at the kind of ache that she felt inside, putting all of her pain and leaving it out there on the stage every night before decompressing. Blues has always been good drinking music though, and her demons got the better of her just shy of her breakout record Pearl.

After Big Brother and The Holding Company, Pearl is the Janis that most of us were just getting to know onstage, taking her bluesy background and blowing it up to something a lot more raw on songs like Cry Baby. Outside of the belters though, Janis didn't need the rest of the band half the time, with a song like Mercedes Benz living and dying on the strength of her voice, going through different runs that you would think were coming out of the run down saloons in Mississippi.

There was always more to Janis than just the blues though, and it's almost bittersweet looking at a song like Me and Bobby McGee, going into folksy territory and sounding a lot more subdued than the huge voice that everyone knew her for. This might have been the last album that she made while she was alive, but it feels like we're hearing the woman underneath all of that blues for the first time here.