August 7th, 1970, Philadelphia, Mount Lawn Cemetery. A new tombstone was placed at a grave that had been unmarked for 33 years. The words on the stone were chosen by two women who had never met Bessie Smith. One of them was a nurse named Juanita Green who had done housework in Smith’s home as a child and become the president of the North Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP.
The other was Janis Joplin, 27 years old, two months away from her own death. She had heard that her hero, the woman whose records she had worn out as a teenager in Port Arthur, Texas, had been lying in an unmarked grave since 1937. 33 years, no stone, no name, nothing. And so, Janis Joplin paid for one.
The inscription reads, “The greatest blues singer in the world will never stop singing.” Those words, written in 1970 by a woman who would be dead in eight weeks, for a woman who had been silent for 33 years. Two months later, Janis Joplin was gone. And the words she chose for Bessie Smith became words that applied to her, too.
This is the story of what Janis Joplin did for Bessie Smith and what Bessie Smith did for Janis Joplin first. To understand what Janis Joplin did that August morning, you have to understand who Bessie Smith was. Bessie Smith was born in 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was the greatest blues singer who ever lived.
Not the greatest female blues singer, the greatest blues singer, full stop. She recorded 160 songs between 1923 and 1933. She sold millions of records in an era when black artists were actively prevented from reaching mainstream audiences. She sang to black audiences in segregated theaters.
She sang to white audiences who pretended they hadn’t come specifically to hear her. She was called the Empress of the Blues. It was not a nickname. It was a statement of fact. She influenced everyone who came after her. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and in a small bedroom in Port Arthur, Texas, a teenage girl named Janis.
In 1937, Bessie Smith died in a car accident in Mississippi. She was 43 years old. Her funeral was enormous. 7,000 people came. And then her husband collected all the money raised for a tombstone and disappeared with it. Her grave at Mount Lawn Cemetery near Philadelphia sat unmarked. One year, five years, 10 years, 33 years, the Empress of the Blues, no stone, no name, nothing.
Janis Joplin first heard Bessie Smith in Port Arthur, Texas. She was a teenager. She had never heard anything like it. She told people she felt like Bessie Smith reincarnated. Some people laughed. Janis didn’t care. She studied Bessie’s phrasing, her growls, the way she bent a note past where it was supposed to go and found something deeper on the other side.
She sounds like something that already exists inside me. Like she got there first and left a map. I just have to follow where she went. In a 1969 interview, Janis said, “I bought Bessie Smith and Odetta records, and one night I did an imitation of Odetta. I’d never sung before, and I came out with this huge voice.
The huge voice came from Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith gave it to her through a record player in Port Arthur. Bessie Smith had been dead for over 20 years when she gave Janis Joplin her voice. And in 1970, Janis learned that the woman who gave her everything was lying in a grave with no name. 33 years 33 years and nobody fixed it.
She gave everyone everything. The music, the language, the blueprint, and she’s been lying there without a name. No. Not while I can do something about it. She didn’t make a speech about it. She didn’t tell the press. She picked up the phone and called Juanita Green. Juanita Green had her own connection to Bessie Smith.
She had done housework in Bessie Smith’s home as a child. She had been in the same rooms as the Empress of the Blues. She had watched her work, heard her rehearse, seen the person behind the performance. And she had watched the grave stay unmarked for 33 years. When Janis Joplin called her, Juanita Green didn’t hesitate.
Two women, different generations, different worlds, different connections to the same woman. Juanita Green, who had been in Bessie Smith’s home as a girl. Janis Joplin, who had Bessie Smith’s voice in her bones. They decided together what the stone would say. The greatest blues singer in the world will never stop singing.
Seven words chosen by a woman who had cleaned Bessie Smith’s house and a woman who had learned to sing from Bessie Smith’s records. Seven words that said everything. And the word never. That was the most important word. Never stop singing. Not even in death. Not even after 33 years of silence. And then August 7th came.
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Janis Joplin drove to Philadelphia, not for a concert, not for a recording session. She drove to a cemetery to give a dead woman her name back. Juanita Green was already there. The stone was there. The words were right. Two women stood at the grave of the Empress of the Blues. The stone was placed. The Empress had a name again.
33 years of silence ended by a girl from Port Arthur and a woman from Philadelphia. She gave me my voice. She gave me the sound. She showed me what a woman with a voice could do in a room full of people who weren’t sure they wanted to hear it. I don’t know what I would have been without her records.
I was nobody in Port Arthur until I put one on. And she’s been lying here without a name. Not anymore. Nobody was there to take photographs. No press. No statement. No announcement. Janis Joplin didn’t call the press. Didn’t issue a statement. Didn’t make it about herself. She just paid for the stone and left.
Two months later, September 1970, Los Angeles, Sunset Sound, Janis Joplin was finishing Pearl. On October 1st, 3 days before her death, she recorded Mercedes Benz. One take. No band. Just her voice. The voice that Bessie Smith gave her. She left the studio that Thursday evening. She never came back.
On October 4th, 1970, Janis Joplin was found in her room at the Landmark Hotel. She was 27 years old. At the front desk, a telegram had arrived that morning from David Niehaus. Nobody got to read it to her. Pearl was released 4 months later. Me and Bobby McGee went to number one. The world heard everything she had been trying to say, but Janis Joplin was not there to hear it.
And the stone she placed at Bessie Smith’s grave on August 7th was still standing. Is still standing. This is not a story about a grave. It is a story about a debt. Bessie Smith gave Janis Joplin her voice through records, through the grooves of a vinyl disc on a player in a Port Arthur bedroom, through the way she bent notes and broke open syllables and made a room full of people understand things they hadn’t known they felt.
She didn’t just imitate Bessie Smith. She continued her. The same sound, the same refusal to apologize for the size of the voice, the same insistence that a woman with something to say will be heard. Bessie Smith in 1923, Janis Joplin in 1967, the same sound traveling across 40 years of American music.
And when Janis learned that the source of all of it had been lying unnamed for 33 years, she did the only thing that made sense. She paid the debt. Port Arthur had taught Janis Joplin that she was too much, that she was ugly, that she didn’t belong. Bessie Smith had taught her otherwise through those records, through that voice, through every note that said, “You are allowed to be this loud.
You are allowed to take up this much space.” The woman who taught Janis Joplin she was allowed to exist deserved a stone that said so. The greatest blues singer in the world will never stop singing, chosen by a girl who owed everything to that voice, and who would would gone in 8 weeks, and own voice would also never really stop.
Janis Joplin learned her hero was buried in an unmarked grave. She paid for the stone. She chose the words. She drove to Philadelphia. She stood at the grave. She said nothing to the press. And 8 weeks later, she was gone. Two women, two graves, both now marked, both now named. Here is what this story asks you. Who gave you your voice? Not literally, but who showed you that you were allowed to be loud? Who showed you that your particular way of being in the world was not something to apologize for? And do they know? Are they named? Are they marked? Does anyone remember them the way Janis Joplin remembered Bessie Smith? Because sometimes the most important thing you can do is drive to Philadelphia and put a stone on a grave, or pick up the phone and say, “I
remember what you gave me.” Or write the words that say, “You will never stop.” Bessie Smith’s grave has had a stone since August 7th, 1970, paid for by two women who knew what she was worth. One of them had worked in her house as a child. One of them had learned to sing from her records.
Both of them understood that some debts cannot go unpaid. Subscribe. The next story goes somewhere nobody has taken you before.
