3 minutes and 58 seconds. That is how long Raise Your Hand runs in the December 4th, 1969 broadcast of This Is Tom Jones. For 3 minutes and 58 seconds, Tom Jones and Janis Joplin made something together on a television stage in London that 14 million people have since watched on YouTube.
That is still described as one of the greatest duets in television history that Tom Jones has been talking about for 54 years. But the moment everyone talks about is not in those 3 minutes and 58 seconds. It is in the 5 seconds after the song ends. Tom Jones turns toward Janis Joplin with his arms slightly open.
The natural gesture, the end of song warmth. The thing a performer does when they have just shared something extraordinary with someone on a stage. She steps back. One hand raised. The lightest possible no. They both laugh. Nine months later she was dead. He has been saying her name ever since. To understand the full weight of what happened on that stage, you have to understand what Tom Jones was in December 1969.
He was 29 years old. He had been the most famous entertainer in the world, not just in music, across entertainment, for 4 years. It’s Not Unusual had gone to number one in 1965, and his career had not slowed for a single month since. The television show had been running since 1969. Women threw their underwear at him during concerts.
This was not metaphor. It was happening. He was the man that mainstream America had decided was the entertainer. The voice, the looks, the charm, the complete package of what the entertainment industry believed a male performer should be. And then Janis Joplin walked onto his stage. She had said in the rehearsal the day before that she did not do variety shows.
She was only there because it was him. She had watched him sing and said, “Jesus, you can really sing.” He had thought, “Thank God people like Janis Joplin had taken note.” He knew going into the broadcast that this was going to be something. He did not know how much something.
The broadcast of Raise Your Hand has been analyzed by music writers and fans and critics for 54 years. Everyone notices the same things. Janis Joplin is not performing for the camera. She is not managing her image. She is not doing what a guest on a variety show does. She is singing in the way she always sang, from inside the song, with everything she had, with no gap between the feeling and the voice.
Tom Jones, who was a great singer and knew it, was elevated by what was beside him. He reached for notes he did not always reach for. He gave more than a variety show usually asked him to give. He was, in the best possible way, chasing. One witness wrote about it afterward, “Tom held his own and kept up beautifully as he was swept up in the storm that was Janis Joplin’s stage presence, trading vocal licks and sending her into fits of joy when he let go and surrendered to her overwhelming energy. This wasn’t just your regular run-of-the-mill variety show. But then again, nothing was ordinary after Janis was through with it. Nothing was ordinary after Janis was through with it. Read that sentence again. The last note, the song ends, the audience is on its feet. Two people are standing on a television stage in London who have just made something that neither of them could
have made without the other. Tom Jones turns toward Janis Joplin. His arms move slightly open. It is the most natural gesture in the world, the warmth of a shared thing, the instinct to acknowledge it physically. She steps back, one hand raised. Not dramatically. The lightest possible articulation of this is where I am and this is where I stay.
Her own terms, her own space, her own territory. Her chin is up, her eyes are bright. She is already smiling. He receives this. His expression shifts from the reaching warmth to something else, the specific amused delight of someone who has just been given an unexpected answer and found it was the better answer. He understands immediately that she was right, that the step back was more Janis Joplin than the hug would have been, that her terms applied consistently even on his stage, in front of his audience, at the end of his song, were the correct terms. They both laugh. The audience laughs with them. The perfect ending to the perfect performance. Tom Jones has told this story in interviews across 54 years. He tells it the same way every time, not because he has rehearsed it, because the memory is clear and he always finds the same words. “God bless her,” he says.
“She told me when she came on, I don’t do variety shows. I’m only doing it because it’s you.” So, she saw through it. She saw through the format and she came anyway and she made it into something. Three words, “God bless her.” The simplest possible tribute. The most honest thing he has.
He was 29 when she stepped back from his arms on that stage. She was 27. Nine months later, October 4th, 1970, she was dead. Tom Jones received the news the way everyone received the news, suddenly. The specific impossibility of it. She had been on his stage nine months ago. She had stepped back from him. They had laughed together.
She had been completely, entirely, wholly alive, and now she was not. He was 30 years old. He had been famous for five years. He had met many people, and many of them were extraordinary. She had been something else. Not just the voice, though the voice was extraordinary, and he knew it better than most people because he had been in the rehearsal room when she evaluated his voice, and he understood what her assessment meant coming from her. Something else.
The specific quality of someone who operated on their own terms in every room they entered, including his room, including his show, including the end of his song. The quality of someone for whom the format was always secondary to what was real. God bless her. She saw through it. The YouTube clip has 14.7 million views.
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The comments on that clip span generations. People who were alive in 1969 and watched it on television in their living rooms. People who were born after she died and found the clip and cannot stop watching it. They all noticed the same moment. Not the peak of the song, the five seconds after she steps back.
He is surprised. They laugh. That moment, five seconds, contains everything that Janis Joplin was. The voice was in the 3 minutes and 58 seconds. The person was in the five seconds after. Her own terms, her own space, her smile that said, “Yes, I know you tried, and no, and here is why the no is funnier than the yes would have been.
” In 2021, Tom Jones posted about it on his official TikTok account. He was 81 years old. He talked about the rehearsal. He talked about what she said. He talked about what it meant. His followers, people who had not been born when she died, who knew Tom Jones from his later career and knew Janis Joplin from whatever version of history had reached them, saw the clip for the first time or the hundredth time, 14.
7 million views. She stepped back from his arms in 1969 and 54 years later he was still telling the story on a platform that did not exist when she was alive and 14 million people were watching the moment she stepped back. Her terms still operating, still in effect. Tom Jones is 84 years old. He is still performing.
He has outlived Janis Joplin by 54 years. He has said her name in every decade since she died. Not because he is obligated, not because it is good publicity, because the specific memory of that stage and that rehearsal and that step back and that laugh is one of the memories he carries. The kind of memory that stays in the specific form that important things stay in. God bless her.
She saw through it. She stepped back from his arms. They laughed. He has been saying her name ever since. Here is what this story asks you. Who is the person you are still talking about? Not because you have to, not because the world expects you to, but because the memory is clear and it matters and there is no better word for it than God bless them.
Tom Jones met Janis Joplin twice in a rehearsal room and on a television stage. She told him he could really sing. She stepped back from his arms. They laughed together. She was gone nine months later. He has been saying her name for 54 years. God bless her. She saw through it. She stepped back and that was the perfect ending. Subscribe.
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