Like many young women of her era, Joplin was seduced by the music of Elvis Presley. But she took her fascination a step further. After seeing his 1956 performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, she tracked down an original recording of “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton. “How a thirteen-year-old white girl in segregated Port Arthur found the R&B single remains a mystery, but she did,” George-Warren writes. She became a student of Southern blues, and a devotee of Louisiana guitarist Leadbelly and the Tennessee-born “Empress of the Blues” Bessie Smith.
In an interview with Hit Parader magazine in 1969, Joplin explained just how influential Smith and other blues singers had been in the development of her own style. “Back in Port Arthur, I’d heard some Lead Belly records, and, well, if the blues syndrome is true, I guess it’s true about me,” she said. “So I began listening to blues and folk music. I bought Bessie Smith and Odetta records, and one night, I was at this party and I did an imitation of Odetta. I’d never sung before, and I came out with this huge voice.”
* someone on Flickennabokk claimed this picture is AI which I think Jim Marshall might have something to say about!?
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