Rolling Stone Called Janis Joplin the Best Female Voice of Her Generation She Said Aretha Was Better
January 31st, 1968, San Francisco. Janice Joplain sat down and wrote a letter to her parents in Port Arthur. She wrote about a lot of things, the band, the city, the people she had met. And then she wrote this. Thanks for the article on Artha. She is by far and away the best thing in music right now.
Then she added something that tells you everything about who Janice Joplain was when she was being honest. Although a review in Rolling Stone called me possibly the best female voice of her generation, but I suppose she and I are of different generations, she was 24 years old. Rolling Stone had just called her possibly the best female voice of her generation, and she sat down and wrote home to her parents to say, “Yes, but Artha Franklin is better.
” This is the story of what Artha meant to Janice and of a connection between two voices that most people have never noticed. Janice Joplain talked about Artha Franklin the way religious people talk about scripture with reverence with the specific humility of someone who has encountered something beyond their current capacity. She said it in interviews.
She said it in letters. She said it on stage sometimes when she was introducing a cover version and wanted the audience to understand where it came from. The most complete version of what she said was this. Billy Holiday, Artha Franklin. They are so subtle they could milk you with two notes. They could go no farther than from an A to a B.
And they could make you feel like they told you the whole universe. And Otus, my man. I think maybe if I keep singing, maybe I’ll get it. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I’ll get it. That sentence from the woman who had just been called possibly the best female voice of her generation. She was telling you what she was reaching for.
The thing just beyond her current grasp, the subtlety, the ability to say the whole universe with two notes that she had not yet found, but was spending her life trying to find. She had the power. Artha had the power and the subtlety. Janice could hear the difference. She wanted both.
Here is where the story gets complicated. In 1968, Janice Joplain recorded Piece of My Heart for the Cheap Thrills album. It became one of the defining songs of her career. The song people still know. The song that still plays on classic rock radio. The song that young people discover and bring back as a rediscovery. What most people don’t know is that Piece of My Heart was written for and first recorded by Irma Franklin.
Irma Franklin, the elder sister of Artha Franklin. Jerry Ragavoy and Bert Burns wrote the song in 1967 and gave it to Irma. Her recording was released as a single. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for best female R&B vocal performance. Then Janice Joplain covered it. Her version, raw, powerful, the big brother wall of sound behind her, became the one that would outlast all the others.
At the Grammy ceremony in 1969, the award for best female R&B vocal performance was announced. The nominees included Irma Franklin for Peace of My Heart. The award went to Artha Franklin for Chain of Fools. The sister whose song Janice had covered lost the award to the other sister. The one whose voice Janice called the whole universe.
Nobody planned this chain of events. It assembled itself out of the ordinary machinery of the music business. Who writes what, who records it, who covers it, who wins the awards. But the chain is there. Janice covered Irma’s song. Irma lost the Grammy. Artha won it. And Artha was the voice Janice had said was better than her own.
Artha Franklin was born in 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee. She grew up in Detroit. Her father was CL Franklin, one of the most famous Baptist ministers in America. The man whose sermons were recorded on vinyl and sold nationally. The Franklin household was a gathering place for every significant black musician of the 1950s. Mahalia Jackson came for dinner.
Dina Washington came, Sam Cook, Clara Ward. Artha absorbed all of them. She recorded her first album for Colombia in 1961 at the age of 18. Colombia tried to make her a pop singer, a jazz singer, a mainstream crossover artist. None of it worked. Then she signed with Atlantic Records in 1967. Jerry Wexler flew her to Muscle Scholes, Alabama.
He put her in a room with a piano and a rhythm section and told her to sing what she felt. I never loved a man the way I love you came out in February 1967. Respect came out in April 1967. Artha Franklin became Artha Franklin and Janice Joplain 3,000 m away in San Francisco heard it and understood immediately that something had happened in music that she needed to study for the rest of her life.
The two notes question. What Janice was describing when she talked about Artha milking you with two notes is something specific and teachable, but also something that can’t be taught. It is the ability to make the space between notes as expressive as the notes themselves. To hold a note slightly longer than expected and then release it in a way that makes the release feel like a whole new idea.
to approach a note from below and arrive at it with a weight that makes the listener feel they have been carried somewhere. Janice Joplain’s voice was powerful. It was raw. It was devastating at full volume. What it was less naturally equipped for was that space between notes, the restraint, the approach, the arrival. She was working on it.
The Pearl Sessions show it. Paul Rothschild, who had produced doors albums and understood subtlety, was helping her find it. The Full Tilt Boogie Band was the most sophisticated musical context she had ever worked in. She was getting there. The final recording suggests she was getting there. She ran out of time.
Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I’ll get it. She didn’t get to keep singing. She got to 27. She got to MercedesBenz one take ac cappella. the voice completely alone with nothing to hide behind and nothing to amplify it. And in that recording, if you listen, you can hear her finding something, the space between the notes, the pause before the next line.
The way she holds the word Lord, just slightly longer than necessary, and releases it with a weight that says, “I know exactly what I’m asking for, and I know I won’t get it.” Two notes. The whole universe she was getting there. Artha Franklin heard about Janice Joplain’s death in October 1970. She did not make a public statement. She continued working.
She continued recording. She continued finding with two notes the whole universe. She lived until 2018. She was 76 years old. For 48 years after Janice died, Artha Franklin kept singing. She never knew or perhaps never fully understood that in a house in Port Arthur, Texas, a teenage girl had listened to her records and heard the place she wanted to go.
She never knew that in a letter home in January 1968, the woman Rolling Stone was calling the best female voice of her generation had written, “Atha is by far and away the best thing in music right now.” Here is what this story asks you. Who do you listen to and think I want to get there? Not where they are. That is their place, not yours.
But the thing they can do that you cannot yet do. The two notes that say the whole universe, whatever your version of that is, Janice Joplain was possibly the best female voice of her generation. Rolling Stone said so. The soldout arenas said so. The 7,000 frozen people at Mterrey said so. and she sat down and wrote a letter home to say yes, but Artha is better.
She was not diminishing herself. She was locating her aspiration. She was saying, “I know where I want to go, and I am going there. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I’ll get it.” She kept singing right up until one take, a capella alone in a booth on a Thursday afternoon in October 1970. She was getting there. Subscribe.
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