Janis Joplin Said She Only Did It Because It Was Him — Tom Jones Never Forgot What Happened Next
In 1969, Tom Jones was one of the biggest stars in the world, not just in music, in the world. The Welsh coal miner’s son who had gone to number one in 1965 with It’s Not Unusual, who sold out arenas on both sides of the Atlantic, who was so famous that women threw their underwear at him during concerts, which sounds like a joke, but was not a joke.
He had a network television variety show. This is Tom Jones. It ran in America from 1969 to 1971. The guests on that show were the biggest names of the era, The Who, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Stevie Wonder. Tom Jones did not need anyone to come on his show. Everyone wanted to come on his show. Except Janis Joplin.
Janis Joplin did not do variety shows. She had made this clear. Variety shows were for the mainstream, for the parents, for the people who watched television on sofas instead of going to concerts. She was not a TV act. She was a force. Then Tom Jones called her. Or reached out somehow. And Janis Joplin said yes. “God bless her.
” Jones remembered decades later. “She said to me when she came on, look, I don’t do variety shows. I’m only doing it because it’s you.” So she saw through it. This is the story of what happened when she walked onto his stage, December 4th, 1969. The This Is Tom Jones Show, London. Tom Jones was 29 years old. He was at his commercial peak.
His show attracted a split audience, young people who wanted to see the rock guests, older viewers who came for Tom. He was the bridge between the two worlds. Janis Joplin was 26 years old. The Cosmic Blues Band was her backing group, the new band, the one she had left Big Brother for, the one that was struggling to find its footing.
The reviews had been mixed. The year had been hard. She walked onto his stage. She was wearing what she always wore, the feathers, the beads, the boa, the everything. There was no costume change for television. There was no toning it down for the mainstream audience. This was what you got when you got Janis Joplin. Take it or leave it.
Tom Jones took it. They sang Raise Your Hand. The song had been written by Al Bell, Eddie Floyd, and Steve Cropper, the soul writers who gave the world Knock on Wood and half of the Stax Records catalog. Janis had made it part of her live set. She had sung it at Woodstock earlier that same year. It was a song that suited her, demanding, physical, the kind of song that asked the voice to go somewhere most voices couldn’t follow.
Tom Jones had a voice that could follow. This was not always obvious from his television appearances, where the smoothness could obscure the power underneath. But he was a former coal miner’s son from the Welsh valleys. His voice came from the same place Janis’s voice came from. Not from training, not from technique, but from something that had been there before the music and would be there after.
When they started singing together, something happened that neither of them had planned. Jones began to rise. The controlled performer, the smooth television host, the man who had given the same polished show thousands of times, started reaching for something he didn’t usually have to reach for, because she was going there.
And the only way to stay in the room with her was to go there, too. Tom Jones hit notes in that performance that nobody who worked with him regularly had heard him hit before. One viewer later commented, “Tom Jones hit an F5 in this performance. That is the highest note I have ever heard him sing.” Janis Joplin got him moving.
She had a policy about audience participation. She mentioned it on the show, almost in passing. “I make it a policy not to tell anyone to sit down. That’s to encourage everybody to stand up.” The This Is Tom Jones studio audience sat down for variety shows. They applauded at designated moments. They watched.
After about 30 seconds of Raise Your Hand, they were on their feet. This was not a thing that happened on This Is Tom Jones. This was a Janis Joplin thing happening on a Tom Jones stage. He was not prepared for it. He was delighted by it. She was not doing anything she wouldn’t have done at any show. This was just Tuesday for Janis Joplin.
At the end of Raise Your Hand, something else happened. Tom Jones tried to hug her. She stepped back, pushed him away lightly. The body language of someone who appreciated the performance, but maintained her own space, her own terms. She had come on his show because it was him, but she had not come to be part of his show.
She had come to do what she always did on whatever stage was available. He understood. “God bless her.” He said. “She saw through it.” He meant she saw through the artifice of television, the formula of the variety show, the calculation behind the booking. She came anyway. She did it her way anyway. She made it better anyway. And then she declined to be folded into the usual end of segment embrace.
She had her own thing. It was not compatible with being someone else’s guest. The performance was broadcast in America on December 4th, 1969. Families watched it on sofas in living rooms across the country. The parents who watched for Tom Jones saw Janis Joplin for the first time. The young people who watched for the rock guests heard a voice that stopped them.
One viewer remembered it 50 years later. “Remember when this was live on the Tom Jones show? My mom loved him and Janis, too, like we all did. When they did this duet, my whole family was up and dancing, jumping up and down in the living room, except for my dad, who just sat drinking his beer, laughing, and enjoying the whole scene.
” That living room, those families on their feet, the dad in the chair with his beer, laughing. That is what the performance did. It made families get up from sofas in living rooms and jump up and down in 1969. That is Janis Joplin doing on a television variety show what she did everywhere she went. Tom Jones was asked about Janis Joplin throughout the rest of his career.
He always mentioned her the same way, with the specific warmth of someone who had been surprised by something and was still grateful for the surprise. “God bless her. She saw through it. She came anyway. She made it better.” The clip has been on YouTube for years. It currently has 14.7 million views. The comments are almost entirely from people in their 60s and 70s remembering where they were when they saw it.
The living rooms, the jumping up and down, the parents who loved Tom Jones discovering that a girl from Port Arthur, Texas could shake the room just as hard. One of the top comments, “Those who have experienced Tom Jones in person know what a powerful singer he is. But Janis was in a different league altogether that night. He adjusted. He rose.
And for of what those two voices could do together was something neither of them could have done alone.” Here is what this story asks you. Have you ever done something you said you’d never do because the right person asked? Janis Joplin did not do variety shows. She had principles about it. She had reasons. The format was wrong for her.
The audience was wrong for her. The context was wrong. Tom Jones asked. She said yes. And 14.7 million people have watched what happened when she walked onto that stage. “God bless her.” Jones said. “She saw through it. She saw through the format and came anyway. She saw through the mainstream calculation and did it her way anyway.
And she made a family in a living room somewhere in America jump up and down on a Thursday night in December 1969 while the dad sat in his chair with his beer and laughed. That’s who she was. That’s what she did. On any stage, every time.” Subscribe. The next story goes somewhere nobody has taken you before.
