June 3, 2021 • 33 mins
J. Edgar Hoover digs into the Janis Joplin file on his desk. One of her bandmates goes missing with G-Men hot on his tail. The rest of the band is forced to don homemade disguises. And in the middle of it all, one of Janis’ most iconic songs is smuggled like profound contraband, from the lush backyard of Johnny Cash to the airtight brain of one of Janis’ closest confidantes.
For more info the 27 Club and other great shows, visit the Double Elvis website and follow Double Elvis on Twitter and Instagram.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Seven Club is a production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis. Janis Joplin died at the age of
and she lived a life that was as auspicious as
it was tragic. I can give you twenty seven reasons
why that statement is true. Seven would be the number
of months her debut solo LP would remain on the
(00:21):
charts as it ushered her into the upper echelons of
the booming rock and roll world. One would be the
number of her signature songs that was hand delivered under
very illegal circumstances to the man in Black no less
before it would work its way third hand to her ears.
Two more would be the number of people close to
her who would odon junk in quick succession, and who
(00:43):
left pretty clear writing on the wall that she would
either choose to read or ignore. Another one would be
the number of hours she'd spend behind bars after the
police finally found a reason to put her rabble rousing
law defying ass and cuffs. And sixteen would be the
number of months she had left to live when her
band began to wear disguises to word off the watchful
(01:06):
eye of hoover raor g men. On this our eighth
episode of season three, The Man in Black, O D S.
Rabble Rousing, Hoover's g Men, and Janice Joplin walking a
Winding Path to Liberation um Jake Brennan in This Is
the Seven Club h Johnny Cash watched from the back
(02:07):
porch of his Henderson, Tennessee estate as the helicopter set
down between his mansion and Old Hickory Lake. It was
an uninvited helicopter, which was the only kind of helicopter
that ever landed in Johnny cash his backyard. His first
reaction was to panic. That m coopter landed with its
nose pointed at the mansion, so Johnny wasn't able to
read what was written on the side. What if it
(02:29):
was the cause? He had pills stashed inside every guitar
case and every sock drawer inside the house. But there
were prescription pills, so they'd have no grounds to bust him,
at least not to arrest him. He played that game before.
He'd also played the game where he was arrested and
let off in handcuffs. The bust in Walker, County, Georgia
(02:50):
was still fresh in his mind. He was high as
a kite that day and decided he wanted to see
some Civil War relics. Johnny got into his head that
the best way to accomplish that miss and was to
start ringing doorbells of houses in the neighborhood. Walker County
residents opened their doors on that fine afternoon, only to
find the men in black stoned out of his gourd eyes,
(03:10):
half masked, drool running down the left side of his chin,
babbling about the Battle of Chickamauga. He tried to bribe
the arresting deputy with a water damp hundred dollar bills
from his pocket. That was a mistake. Now in ninety seven,
Johnny Cash listened to the coptors blades as they made
that high pitched grinding noise they make once the engine
(03:31):
has been cut, and wondered if he had made another mistake.
It was possible I couldn't remember them all. And then
he wondered if there was a different reason that he
should be nervous. Perhaps he should run inside to fetch
his shotgun. Maybe this full pilot had no clue whose
backyard he just landed him. Johnny thought about grabbing a
shotgun and then giving this full pilot the ultimate introduction, Hello,
(03:53):
I'm Johnny Cash. The copters door opened, and Johnny breathed
a sigh of relief. The pilot was alone. He wasn't
there to make trouble, and he certainly wasn't there to
call out Johnny Cash on another mistake. The man's shoulder
length hair was whipped around in the air by the
copts blade's residual motion. A lit cigarette stuck out from
his bushy beard. In one hand, he held a pull
(04:14):
top can of beer in the other, a quarter inch
demo reel. The man was also carrying a huge grin,
a dumb grin if you asked Johnny, and the closer
he got to the mansion's porch, the more Johnny found
that dumb grin familiar. And then it hit him. This
was the guy who pushed the broom at Columbia Records
Nashville office. This was the guy who had given Johnny
(04:36):
a demo take weeks ago while he was cleaning the bathroom.
He was the one of the same fellow with the
same grin, who at least a year or two earlier,
had introduced himself to Johnny backstage after a show. At
that point, he wasn't wearing a janitor's uniform, but an
army uniform. And you remember that guy had two first
names for his first and last name, Bob Roberts or
Jim James or Dick Richards or something, Chris Christophers. And
(05:00):
that was a kid had a set of balls on
him landing that bird and Johnny Cash's goddamn lawng He
was real close to the porch now, and he raised
a hand with the reel in the air as a greeting.
You're the janitor at the office, Johnny yelled from the porch, Christofferson,
I'm afraid I am misplaced the tape he gave me son. Actually,
Cash had politely taken the tape and then eventually tossed
(05:21):
it into the middle of Old Hickory Lake when he
got home that night, and that was fine. Chris replied,
that was just fine. He had another one. Chris acknowledged
the set of balls he had on him. He figured
Johnny Cash was thinking about that. He was thankful that
Johnny Cash wasn't holding a shotgun in his hand. But
now now was the time for a set of balls.
Because see here the reason he knew how to land
(05:42):
a helicopter in Johnny Cash's backyard Chris Christofferson flew copters
in Germany for the Army for three years, and then
he flew copters to offshore oil rigs in the Gulf
of Mexico after he left the Army. He could put
a bird down in a man's lawn with a road
soda in one hand and his fucking eyes closed if
you wanted to. That's just the sort of man Chris
Christofferson was. His father and grandfather's before him were military men,
(06:06):
and they all wanted Chris to be a military man.
They groomed him forward in Brownville, Texas, and the first
time he put the Army on hold was to attend
Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He wrote a novel in
a dissertation on William Blake. But the second time, the
second time he left the Army was when he turned
down and offered to teach English at West Point. Instead,
he moved his family to Nashville and took a bottom
(06:28):
wrong day job pushing a broom across Columbia records, dirty
Nashville floors, just so he could increase the chances that
he'd someday pass someone just like Johnny Cash in the
hallway and slip him his demo reel. As Johnny Cash knew,
Nashville came with its own set of vices and fetamines, tranquilizers, whiskey, bourbon,
(06:49):
and lots of beer. Chris Christofferson played the part, lived
the life hard, and Johnny Cash could relate. Johnny Cash
could see it in the wrinkles and Chris Christofferson's face
and the worn down eyes that hid behind that big
dumb grint. Chris's wife had left him, She took the kids.
Chris was about thirty years old, just a few years
(07:09):
Johnny's Jr. He told himself that he hadn't made his
life choices in vain. He hadn't left behind the army
in West Point, in the Gulf of Mexico and Oxford
in his marriage, hadn't left it all behind for nothing.
Johnny Cash was gonna listen to his goddamn demo reel,
even if he had to go up in a helicopter
and landed on the lawn of Johnny Cash's Henderson mansion.
(07:30):
And so that's what he goddamn did. He said this
to Johnny Cash took a haul off a pull top
beer can that was now offering diminishing returns and made
a smile even bigger now that he had done it,
now that he was standing there in Johnny Cash's yard
with that beer and that demo reel with Johnny Cash
looking stand off and is potentially contemplating a few rounds
(07:50):
of buckshot to scare the stocker janitor office property. Chris
Christofferson wondered if it had been a good idea after all,
or just some crazy active career suicide before his career
even had a new life. But Johnny Cash thought it
was a hell of an entrance and the most goddamn
persistent in pig headed thing he'd seen in years, So
he put Chris Christofferson's tape on the High five, liked
(08:11):
what he heard, and soon Johnny Cash was covering Chris
Christofferson's songs on his weekly television show. Soon Chriss demos
were grabbing the attention of not just Nashville casts, but
Hollywood's counterculture too, from Sam Peck and Pot to Dennis
Hawber and every Dusty Harley ride and urban cow poke
in between. But one of those songs was Me and
Bobby McGee. Its lyrics were picked up by Nashville outlaws,
(08:34):
California hippies and pretty much everyone in between is a
battle cry for their underdog causes. Bob Kneworth heard it
somewhere the way Bob Neworth heard things. He was there.
He was everywhere. He was always on the scene or
making the scene or somewhere scene at Jason A songwriter, singer,
and producer, new Worth was also an aide de camp,
a confidet, and a fixer when needed, and he had
(08:56):
recently spent some time fixing for Jim Morrison at the
Doors and Key, picking him on the street and narrow.
Now the insistence of Albert Grossman, who had his own
concerns about Janice Joplin, new Worth was spending time with
Janie in her new band. Nw Worth was in Grossman's
office when he heard Me and Bobby McGee for the
first time played by Canadian singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. He
(09:18):
knew exactly who the song was meant for. He closed
his eyes and he could picture Janis Joplin singing. Teach
me that song, man, new Worth insisted, and Gordon played
it again real slow. Knworth grabbed the pencil and paper.
He wrote it down fast, learned it quick and then
did his own impression of a helicopter landing on Janis
Joplin's front steps to deliver something that she just had
(09:42):
to hear. Jaeder Hoover's desk was all memos, an ecosystem
(10:17):
of memos, piles of paper on high ranking officials stacked
high next to piles of paper on low ranking degenerates.
Reports for the director's eyes only, reports on good guys
breaking bad and bad guys getting worse. Recommendations on who
should be watched like a hawk and who could be
left alone to mind their own damn business. Who was
seventy j Edgar Hoover was seventy five years old. He'd
(10:40):
seen it all for nearly half a century, and in
the service of seven U S presidents. As Director the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jaedger Hoover had a memo on
every subversive, every comic sympathizer, every fascist organizer, every civil
rights empathizer. No memo was unimportant, no threat to the
United States was too small. And the coffee maker on
(11:01):
the table near the desk in his office gurgled and
spat steep and that universal sound that meant that the
Java was nearly finished with its orderly perk in warm
caffe Nation was nine. Hoover inhaled the smell of the
light rose and picked up a memo that lay on
top of a short stack of papers in the corner
of his desk, urgent teletype. It read, at the top
possible Violence Ravinia Park Concert, Highland Park, Illinois, August nine.
(11:27):
This wasn't the first confidential rock and roll memo he'd read,
and it wouldn't be the last. In fact, memos on
rock stars had become increasingly commonplace in Hoover's world. Rock
and roll was proving itself to be a very clear
and very present danger to decency and good morals. In
the fifties, the memos were about the various death threats
and extortion attempts on Elvis Presley. In the sixties, the
(11:50):
memos were about the Kingsman's filthy song Louis Louis, which
Hoover new was a piece of trash, even if their
investigation hadn't conclusively proved it was a piece of trash
and now is. The sixties became the seventies. With Richard
Nixon at the Holm, the memos were on the rock
and roll subversives in street fighting types, Jimmy Hendricks, Jim Morrison,
(12:10):
Janice Joplin. Hoover read on reliable source advised that rock
concert is to be held at Ravinia Park beginning approximately
a PM, featuring rock singer Janis Joplin. Source crowd estimated
to be in neighborhood of twenty persons. Hoover walked over
to the coffeemaker, pulled the caraffe from the drip, and
started to pour himself a director sized couple of joe.
(12:32):
He kept one eye on the poor and one eye
on the memo he kept reading. Source further advises on
confirmed reports have been received I possible attempts to disrupt
concert and cause violence an area by unknown persons, possibly
by some of those involved in disruption of Chicago Grant
Park concert July. Source further advised that Ravinia Park area
was to be heavily patrolled by some two hundred police
(12:54):
officers from nearby communities. God damn Grant Park, Hoover thought
to himself as he blew on the hot liquid and
attempted to take a first sip that wouldn't burn his lips.
To hell Grant Park and then a ship show It
was pitched as a free show by Sly and the
family Stone and you better believe the Bureau had some
memos on that bunch of Left Coast ship show starters.
(13:17):
The free show was both an apology and a peace
offering to Chicago after Slide bailed on playing some shows
in town, and not just bailing, but bailing after making
audiences wait for hours. But at Grand Park, Chicago was
still pisted it Sly when he showed up, only to
be made to wait again. The crowd grew throughout the day,
and so did the temperature. Soon the crowd was around
(13:38):
fifty strong and the mercury was topping out at ninety something.
Rumors started to spread throughout the audience that Sly was
standing them up once more when Chicago was tired of
waiting again. That's when the rocks started flying in the
bottles whatever people can get their hands on, mud, cloth, sticks, stones,
The thrones of cops on hand that day took the
burnt of the hurl projectiles, bottle us to the face,
(14:00):
rocks to the balls. They picked up their attackers, weapons
and retaliating. Cops jumped kids, kids jump cops, storefront windows busted,
shots fired, into the air to scare the mob into submission.
They only made the mob go harder. Hundreds of people,
including Chicago police officers, were injured. Thirty cops run into
the hospital. That day. Hoover sat down at his desk
(14:21):
and read over the Ravinia Park memo again. His coffee
cups started to make its inevitable staying on another stack
of memos nearby. As shitty as Grant Park was, this
Janice Joplin show had the potential to be even worse.
Jaeger Hoover didn't like Janice Choplin. She was a loose
lipped hippie succubiss with a voice like a strangled cat
(14:42):
and heat. But worse, she was a troublemaker, a rabble rouser.
She hailed from San Francisco, the land of rabble rousers.
She was a drunk, She was loud, she had a
filthy mouth. She wasn't a lady. She was too masculine
for Jaeger Hoover, not masculine enough. But that's a whole
other story. Who knew that Janis Joplin had a long
history of disturbing the piece. The first memo on Janis
(15:04):
Joplin that Hoover remembered seeing was when she was a
student at the University of Texas at Austin, living with
that group of commie and civil rights synthazers at the Ghetto,
and then her first group, Big Brother in the Holding Company,
were nearly arrested for disturbing the piece at the Matrix
in San Francisco. Worst of all, however, was her show
at the Curtis Hickson Holland Tampa, Florida. This was the
(15:25):
year before ninety nine, just a few months after Jim
Morrison un zipped his pants to let his crawling kingsnake
out while on stage in Miami. What the hell is
it about Florida, Hoover thought, as he took another gentle
sip of his steaming hot coffee. Janiss new band, the
one assembled by Skip pro Cop was calling themselves the
(15:46):
Cosmic Blues Band and touring behind a new record. I
got them old Cosmic Blues again, Mama. But Skip was
out of the picture, having jumped Ship when Janice wouldn't
give Sam Andrew the boot, who followed her from Big Brother.
Skip didn't think Sam was good enough, so Skip was
out and Sam was in, as was Bill King On keyboards,
John Till on guitar, Brad Campbell on bass, and Mary
(16:08):
Baker on drums, along with the horn section. At least
at that particular moment, if Big Brother had maintained a
steady lineup of players and the Cosmic Blues Band was
practically a revolving door of musicians, it was unsteady. And
the unsteadiness was in full display on that November night
in Tampa at the Curtis Hixon Hall. So was Janice's
infamous rabble rousing temper, the one that Hoover count on
(16:31):
like a well maintained wristwatch. But when she started the
slow simmer of summertime, the crowd of nearly thirty people
bum rushed the stage. They pressed their bodies closer to
here every nuance in her voice. They stood on chairs
to see every move she made with the microphone clenched
tightly in her fist. And the cops on duty saw
the crowd's behavior as the early warning sign of an
(16:53):
impending riot, the same kind of thing that cops had
seen at the door show in Miami and the door
show at the Singer Bowl and Queen's. The cops didn't
wait to spring into action. They yanked people down off
their chairs. They grabbed kids standing in the aisles by
the shoulders and pushed them towards their seats. One officer
even at a bullhorn and was screaming with an inches
of petrified kids faces nuts when Janice lost him. Don't
(17:16):
funk with those people, She yelled into her microphone, yelling
as loud as she could so that she could be
heard over the bullhorns, and nasily why the bullhorn became
a weapon? The cop waved at her heads and faces,
his free hand firmly caressing his billy club. He just
wanted someone to give him a reason to use it,
and Janice was happy to be that someone. Hey, Mr
(17:37):
Janice yelled again, this time looking the cop right in
his eyes. Why the fund are you so uptight? Man?
Did you buy a five dollar ticket to the show?
And that was all the cop needed. Just as the
GEMA had suspected for some time, obscene Janice went blue.
She cursed on stage numerous times, each time directed at
an officer of the law. Even then, they arrested her
(17:58):
in her dressing room right after the band finished their set.
She was let out of the Curtis Hixon Hall and handcuffs,
passed the thousands of kids who had pressed themselves close
to be near her, past BB King, the Chicago blues
legend who had opened the show. An hour later, Janice
posted a five four dollar bond and walked out of
the Tampa police station. She walked out wearing a fur
(18:19):
coat and a fur hat. When Jaeger Hoover read about
Janice Joplin's Tampa arrest in ninety nine, that was the
detail that pissed him off the most. The fur coat
in the fur hat, walking out of the police station
like she was victorious. It's like she was anything but
what Hoover knew her to be. A subversive, a rabble rouser,
(18:42):
a threat to the decency and good morals of the
American people. Jack or Hoover would keep his eye on her,
and the FBI would maintain a file on her, and
they've keep their nerves caffeiniated in their teletypes urgent, and
they would get her. They'd get to Janice Joplin by
getting to someone close to her first. We'll be right
(19:03):
back after this. We were the g mens staking out
Bill King's parents place, were waiting for him. When he arrived.
They sat in sedans had idled in the darkness. The
air outside was cold, and the wind kicked up, and
the hemlock trees creaked Indiana. December, the twenty two year
(19:28):
old had traveled home for the holidays. High off his
new role as Janice Joplin's keyboardist and musical director. He
had no idea that someone would step out of an
idolnk sedan, toss a half smoked marlbro to the frigid
asphalt and stopped him from ever reaching his parents front door.
Just days before, the Cosmic Blues Band had been guests
of honor at Stax Records this holiday show in Memphis.
(19:50):
One of Janie's idols, Otis Redding, had been dead a year,
but Stax Otis's record label soldiered on. The homegrown town
on display was on denied have a book of Tea
in the MG's Carlo and Rufus, Thomas, Johnny Taylor, Eddie
Floyd in the shadow of Otis loom large, as did
the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr. Who had been
shot dead only eight months earlier at the Lorraine Motel,
(20:13):
the same hotel where Bill Janis and the band were
staying while they were in town. The band had gone
through many personnel changes, but they were finding their footing,
and Bill was hopeful that a stern role on the
Stack Show with the high octane R and B icons
that Janice love, would help raise their game. It appealed
to the shadow of Otis writing to guide them, but
the Shadow of Otis wasn't in a guiding kind of mood.
(20:37):
Despite her newfound popularity, Janis Joplin was still an acolyte
in the hallowed Temple of Soul. The mostly black audience
saw the Cosmic blues band as a xerox of the
real thing. Janice was either brave or stupid to follow
Eddie Floyd to open with a cover of Eddie Floyd's
song Raise Your Hand. Then Janis sang the bgs to
(20:58):
love Somebody like Otis would have it searching, pleading a
raw nerve that only got raw as the band went
from soft to loud. She thought back to Oh this
is Show at the film war that she had seen
the ones she attended, high on LSD spiked Cold Duck,
and thought of how that music made her feel. She
closed her eyes, held out her hand in agony, and
(21:18):
waited for Otis's spirit to grab it and pull her higher.
She never left the ground and for the soul crowd
in Memphis, something was missing. Bill wish that they were
hiding that something and ace in their back pocket, but
no dice. And now back in Indiana at his parents
place for some spiced fruitcake and holiday cheer, Bill King
(21:39):
found something else hiding. Hiding in plain sight. Bill was
met on the sidewalk by a man in glasses with
comb black hair and a nondescript gray suit. Mr King.
The man in glass zest Bill was caught off guard,
someone says Mr. King, and Bill steps looking around for
his father, and Bill pointed out himself and cocked his
head to the side and the universal nonverbal signed for
(22:00):
Whomi Mr Bill King. The man in glasses clarified. Bill
nodded his head slowly that Mr Bill King, him and
b three organists musical director from Miss Janis Joplin. The
man in glasses confirmed that he was a fed and
he was there to add another title to Bill Kink's
growing list of superlatives. Vietnam War draft dodger. Bill King
(22:22):
was under arrest to Janice and the rest of the band.
Bill had simply disappeared. He had gone home to visit
his family for Christmas and never returned, and they had
no way to get in touch with them. Janice didn't
even know what town in Indiana he'd gone home too,
and if he had told her, it was possible that
she was too fucked up to hear him. Booze and
Smack had a hold on Janice. They gripped tight. They
(22:44):
didn't want to let go. Gabriel Meckler, the producer hired
to hom I got them all cosmic music, and Mama
knew it as soon as he heard Janice Choplin sing
in the studio that her voice was shot from all
the drinking, the drunk and the smoking the late nights
in the later mornings. Here they were supposedly making janiss
big solo debut after her Big Brother departure, and her
(23:04):
voice was shit. If Janis didn't make some sweeping changes,
her voice wouldn't be the only thing that would be lost.
She could be lost as quickly as Nancy Gurley was lost. Nancy,
the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, didn't know
the fix would be your last. In July sixty nine,
Nancy and James hopped in their Toyota jeep with their
(23:26):
three year old son, Hongo, and went camping along the
Russian River near Cloverdale, California. James packed the essentials, a tent,
sleeping bags, a canoe, and a hundred dollar baggy of heroin.
They spent the day on the river. They voted, they swam,
they fished. That night, James walked to the Toyota for
a different catch. He fished the heroin baggy out of
(23:49):
the glove box. He had been drinking wine all night,
so when he shot up, he missed his own vein.
Nancy watched as James pulled the needle from his arm.
She spoke up. She'd been trying quit dope again, but
as she watched, her husband methodically pressed the syringe into
his body. She fancied her own head out in the
middle of the California wilderness, so James shot her up.
(24:11):
This time he didn't miss. Minutes later, Nancy took her
last breath. She was thirty years old. James was charged
with second degree murder for giving his wife the deadly dose.
When Janie learned of Nancy's death, she frantically searched for
her own stash or junk brang up Sam Andrew, and
the two got as high as they could. Janis and
(24:33):
Sam got high again in the hotel suite after a
sold out show at the Royal Albert Hall in London,
only this time it was too much for Sam. When
Janice realized that he wasn't breathing, she knew something was
horribly wrong. She could feel her heart beat in her ears.
Her heart thudded in her ears. Burned, she ran into
the bathroom and turned the bathtub fasten on as cold
(24:54):
as it would go. She felt the rhythm in her
ears connect to the rhythm in her chest, now a
sensation like something was going to pound straight through her body.
She ran back into the sweet's main room and stripped Sam, naked,
every limb, slack and going cold. Someone else was in
the room now. Janice's vision was blurred from the throbbing
in her ears and in her chest. She couldn't make
(25:15):
out a face, but she gestured wildly that she needed help,
and the two of them carried Sam into the bathroom
and dropped him into the cold water. Minutes later, Sam
snapped back to life. Janice would feel the heartbeat in
her ears again. Months later, when after a show on
winter Land in San Francisco, the hits she gave herself
proved to be too much. She felt that as soon
(25:36):
as she pushed the plunger towards her arm and the
pounding continued, she shut her eyes and saw the man
from her dreams, the one on the gold Harley with
the orange flames, and then she was out. Her friends
found her in her room, unconscious, her skin cold and blue.
They were able to revive her, just like she had
revived Sam, and this time she was luckier than Nancy Girly.
(25:59):
This time she hadn't completely disappeared. Nancy Gurley had disappeared.
Bill King had disappeared, and where the fuck was Bill King?
In fact, it was Bill King's father, a World War
Two vette who landed at Normandy, who helped broker a
deal with the Feds on that December evening, when Bill
returned home for the holidays. If Bill would agree to
(26:22):
join the army, then he could avoid jail time for
his egregious draft dodging, and so he did. And then
as a grunt in basic training, Bill watched the Ed
Sullivan Show from his barracks, only to see Janis Joplin
and the Boys performing Eddie Floyd to Raise Your Hand,
the cover version that he had arranged prior to his
FBI intervention, Bill was Crestfallen. Months later, on the night
(26:45):
before he was to be shipped off to Vietnam, Bill
went a wall. He stood out in the side of
some backstreet, stuck his thumb into the air, and hitched
all the way to Canada. Word got back to Janison
the bed Bill King was starting over. It was becoming
clear every day that he wasn't the only one who
would need to put out a disguise and become a
different person. Bob knew Earth was in the middle of
(27:31):
telling Brad Campbell that his name was no longer Brad Campbell.
As he was speaking, Knworth ran a dark brown eyebrow
pencil along the hairs of Campbell's blonde mustache. It was
going to take a minute, he warned Campbell. This was
a lot of mustache, a lot of blonde, and yes,
this eyebrow pencil was really the only thing they had
that would get the job done. K new Worth traced
(27:53):
the pencil along more blonde hairs, quick downward strokes from
Campbell's nose to his lips. Sometimes a clusters would require
more than a single pass. Like new Worth had said,
it was a lot of mustache. Now tell me again
what your name is, new Worth ask Campbell. Campbell, bass
player for Janis Joplin's Cosmic Blues Band, clenched his eyes
shut and twisted up his face like he was running
(28:15):
through filing cabinets inside his head. Then he opened his eyes.
Keith Cherry, he responded, good, Neworth said, and continued to
darken Campbell's blonde mustache. And where are you from? Campbell,
a Canadian since the day he was born, didn't have
to think about that answer. The United States, he answered.
New Worth nodded his head and approval. That's right, that's good.
(28:36):
That's very good, Keith Cherry from the United States, new
Worth said, and placed his hand on Campbell's chin to
turn his head this way and that and expect his
final pencil strokes. Now it's time to do your sideburns.
Word of Bill King's FBI Bust had made its way
back to Janis and the Cosmic Blues Band. The band's
bass player, Brad Campbell, had a recently expired visa, and
(28:58):
the band had a big show in New York City,
that they couldn't miss. Their collective paranoia was off the charts.
What if the FEDS were targeting the whole band? What
if Bill King was just the first to go down
and the rest of them were just sitting ducks waiting
unknowingly to fall like ponds and Jay ger Hoover's diabolical game.
The easiest target surely would be Brad Campbell and his
(29:19):
expired visa. They wouldn't arrest Campbell, but they sure ships
send him packing back to the Great White North. Janice
couldn't handle losing two players in such quick succession, not
with things going the way things were going. So they
need to disguise Campbell. New look, new name, knew everything.
Enter Bob new Worth, rock and roll fixer. There was
(29:40):
a reason why Neworth made the rounds, why it was
found everywhere rock and roll was found blossoming in the
nineteen sixties. New Worth could see into people. He could
see what made them tick, what got them going, get
them ryle cut them off. He saw what was happening
in Cambridge, in Nashville, in Austin, in New York. He
saw what was happening at Newport, at Monterey, at stock.
(30:00):
New Worth decided he was happy with Campbell's formerly blonde
mutton chops. He told the bass player to put on
a pair of dark sunglasses and then strategically placed Janiss
for hat on top of his head, with his tongue
unconsciously mashed between his teeth. Knworth adjusted the hat just
so and said, out of the side of his mouth,
if you wear the mask long enough, sooner or later
(30:21):
you become the mask. Campbell figured, k new Earth was
just talking about the quick and dirty disguise job on
his face, but new Worth was really thinking about Janice,
thinking about how, at some point in her quest for
liberation from her past, and from her hometown and from
buzz harshing squares in general, she had gotten lost, lost
in the toughest nail stage persona which wasn't really her
(30:43):
lost in heroin addiction, which had replaced the one time
meth addiction that she swore she wouldn't repeat. The least
he could do, new Worth figured was to put Janice
at ease about the basis with the expired visa thing
and then as a cherry on top of the Keith
Cherry disguise share of the song that Gordon Lightfoot had
shown him. It was like it was written for her.
(31:05):
Nworth looked into Janice's eyes as you played the song
for me and Bobby McGee and saw that she recognized
it too. She'd never heard it before, but she recognized it.
The new Wis impact on Janice wouldn't end there. He
would show up again at a crucial crossroads in Janice's life,
only this time he'd have someone else in town. He'd
(31:25):
bring Chris Christofferson to Janice's doorstep, and Janice would feel
as though she had known Chris her whole life. I'm
Jake Brennan, and this is the twenty seven Club, all right.
(31:50):
This episode of The seven Club is brought to you
by disgrace Land, the award winning music and true crime
podcast that I also host. Disgrace Land is available only
on the free Amazon Music game. To hear tons of
insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away with murder
and behaving very badly. Nirvana, Prince, Jerry Lee Lewis, The
Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Cardi Bate, and many many more.
(32:11):
Go to Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land, or if
you have an Echo device, just say hey Alexa play
the Disgrace Land podcast. The twenty seven Club is hosted
and co written by me Jake Brennan. Zeth Landi is
the lead writer and co producer. Matt Boden mixes the show.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Lenetta.
(32:31):
The twenty seven Club is produced by myself for Double
Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this
episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
twenty seven Club series page. Our previous seasons on Jimmy
Hendrix and Jim Morrison are available for you to binge
right now wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're
like we here, please be sure to find and follow
the twenty seven Club on the I Heart Radio app,
(32:53):
Apple podcast or wherever you get shows. And if you'd
like to win a free twenty seven Club poster designed
by the man himself of Nate Gonzalez, then leave a
review for twenty seven Club on Apple Podcasts or hashtag
subscribe to seven Club on social media and we'll pick
two winners each week and announce them on the Double
Elevis Instagram page that's at Double Elvis. Give that a fall,
(33:15):
so get out there and spread the word about the
twenty seven Club. You can talk to me per usual
on Instagram and Twitter, at disgrace Land, pod Rock Rolla.
What's up for your is
The Seven Club is a production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis. Janis Joplin died at the age of
and she lived a life that was as auspicious as
it was tragic. I can give you twenty seven reasons
why that statement is true. Seven would be the number
of months her debut solo LP would remain on the
(00:21):
charts as it ushered her into the upper echelons of
the booming rock and roll world. One would be the
number of her signature songs that was hand delivered under
very illegal circumstances to the man in Black no less
before it would work its way third hand to her ears.
Two more would be the number of people close to
her who would odon junk in quick succession, and who
(00:43):
left pretty clear writing on the wall that she would
either choose to read or ignore. Another one would be
the number of hours she'd spend behind bars after the
police finally found a reason to put her rabble rousing
law defying ass and cuffs. And sixteen would be the
number of months she had left to live when her
band began to wear disguises to word off the watchful
(01:06):
eye of hoover raor g men. On this our eighth
episode of season three, The Man in Black, O D S.
Rabble Rousing, Hoover's g Men, and Janice Joplin walking a
Winding Path to Liberation um Jake Brennan in This Is
the Seven Club h Johnny Cash watched from the back
(02:07):
porch of his Henderson, Tennessee estate as the helicopter set
down between his mansion and Old Hickory Lake. It was
an uninvited helicopter, which was the only kind of helicopter
that ever landed in Johnny cash his backyard. His first
reaction was to panic. That m coopter landed with its
nose pointed at the mansion, so Johnny wasn't able to
read what was written on the side. What if it
(02:29):
was the cause? He had pills stashed inside every guitar
case and every sock drawer inside the house. But there
were prescription pills, so they'd have no grounds to bust him,
at least not to arrest him. He played that game before.
He'd also played the game where he was arrested and
let off in handcuffs. The bust in Walker, County, Georgia
(02:50):
was still fresh in his mind. He was high as
a kite that day and decided he wanted to see
some Civil War relics. Johnny got into his head that
the best way to accomplish that miss and was to
start ringing doorbells of houses in the neighborhood. Walker County
residents opened their doors on that fine afternoon, only to
find the men in black stoned out of his gourd eyes,
(03:10):
half masked, drool running down the left side of his chin,
babbling about the Battle of Chickamauga. He tried to bribe
the arresting deputy with a water damp hundred dollar bills
from his pocket. That was a mistake. Now in ninety seven,
Johnny Cash listened to the coptors blades as they made
that high pitched grinding noise they make once the engine
(03:31):
has been cut, and wondered if he had made another mistake.
It was possible I couldn't remember them all. And then
he wondered if there was a different reason that he
should be nervous. Perhaps he should run inside to fetch
his shotgun. Maybe this full pilot had no clue whose
backyard he just landed him. Johnny thought about grabbing a
shotgun and then giving this full pilot the ultimate introduction, Hello,
(03:53):
I'm Johnny Cash. The copters door opened, and Johnny breathed
a sigh of relief. The pilot was alone. He wasn't
there to make trouble, and he certainly wasn't there to
call out Johnny Cash on another mistake. The man's shoulder
length hair was whipped around in the air by the
copts blade's residual motion. A lit cigarette stuck out from
his bushy beard. In one hand, he held a pull
(04:14):
top can of beer in the other, a quarter inch
demo reel. The man was also carrying a huge grin,
a dumb grin if you asked Johnny, and the closer
he got to the mansion's porch, the more Johnny found
that dumb grin familiar. And then it hit him. This
was the guy who pushed the broom at Columbia Records
Nashville office. This was the guy who had given Johnny
(04:36):
a demo take weeks ago while he was cleaning the bathroom.
He was the one of the same fellow with the
same grin, who at least a year or two earlier,
had introduced himself to Johnny backstage after a show. At
that point, he wasn't wearing a janitor's uniform, but an
army uniform. And you remember that guy had two first
names for his first and last name, Bob Roberts or
Jim James or Dick Richards or something, Chris Christophers. And
(05:00):
that was a kid had a set of balls on
him landing that bird and Johnny Cash's goddamn lawng He
was real close to the porch now, and he raised
a hand with the reel in the air as a greeting.
You're the janitor at the office, Johnny yelled from the porch, Christofferson,
I'm afraid I am misplaced the tape he gave me son. Actually,
Cash had politely taken the tape and then eventually tossed
(05:21):
it into the middle of Old Hickory Lake when he
got home that night, and that was fine. Chris replied,
that was just fine. He had another one. Chris acknowledged
the set of balls he had on him. He figured
Johnny Cash was thinking about that. He was thankful that
Johnny Cash wasn't holding a shotgun in his hand. But
now now was the time for a set of balls.
Because see here the reason he knew how to land
(05:42):
a helicopter in Johnny Cash's backyard Chris Christofferson flew copters
in Germany for the Army for three years, and then
he flew copters to offshore oil rigs in the Gulf
of Mexico after he left the Army. He could put
a bird down in a man's lawn with a road
soda in one hand and his fucking eyes closed if
you wanted to. That's just the sort of man Chris
Christofferson was. His father and grandfather's before him were military men,
(06:06):
and they all wanted Chris to be a military man.
They groomed him forward in Brownville, Texas, and the first
time he put the Army on hold was to attend
Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He wrote a novel in
a dissertation on William Blake. But the second time, the
second time he left the Army was when he turned
down and offered to teach English at West Point. Instead,
he moved his family to Nashville and took a bottom
(06:28):
wrong day job pushing a broom across Columbia records, dirty
Nashville floors, just so he could increase the chances that
he'd someday pass someone just like Johnny Cash in the
hallway and slip him his demo reel. As Johnny Cash knew,
Nashville came with its own set of vices and fetamines, tranquilizers, whiskey, bourbon,
(06:49):
and lots of beer. Chris Christofferson played the part, lived
the life hard, and Johnny Cash could relate. Johnny Cash
could see it in the wrinkles and Chris Christofferson's face
and the worn down eyes that hid behind that big
dumb grint. Chris's wife had left him, She took the kids.
Chris was about thirty years old, just a few years
(07:09):
Johnny's Jr. He told himself that he hadn't made his
life choices in vain. He hadn't left behind the army
in West Point, in the Gulf of Mexico and Oxford
in his marriage, hadn't left it all behind for nothing.
Johnny Cash was gonna listen to his goddamn demo reel,
even if he had to go up in a helicopter
and landed on the lawn of Johnny Cash's Henderson mansion.
(07:30):
And so that's what he goddamn did. He said this
to Johnny Cash took a haul off a pull top
beer can that was now offering diminishing returns and made
a smile even bigger now that he had done it,
now that he was standing there in Johnny Cash's yard
with that beer and that demo reel with Johnny Cash
looking stand off and is potentially contemplating a few rounds
(07:50):
of buckshot to scare the stocker janitor office property. Chris
Christofferson wondered if it had been a good idea after all,
or just some crazy active career suicide before his career
even had a new life. But Johnny Cash thought it
was a hell of an entrance and the most goddamn
persistent in pig headed thing he'd seen in years, So
he put Chris Christofferson's tape on the High five, liked
(08:11):
what he heard, and soon Johnny Cash was covering Chris
Christofferson's songs on his weekly television show. Soon Chriss demos
were grabbing the attention of not just Nashville casts, but
Hollywood's counterculture too, from Sam Peck and Pot to Dennis
Hawber and every Dusty Harley ride and urban cow poke
in between. But one of those songs was Me and
Bobby McGee. Its lyrics were picked up by Nashville outlaws,
(08:34):
California hippies and pretty much everyone in between is a
battle cry for their underdog causes. Bob Kneworth heard it
somewhere the way Bob Neworth heard things. He was there.
He was everywhere. He was always on the scene or
making the scene or somewhere scene at Jason A songwriter, singer,
and producer, new Worth was also an aide de camp,
a confidet, and a fixer when needed, and he had
(08:56):
recently spent some time fixing for Jim Morrison at the
Doors and Key, picking him on the street and narrow.
Now the insistence of Albert Grossman, who had his own
concerns about Janice Joplin, new Worth was spending time with
Janie in her new band. Nw Worth was in Grossman's
office when he heard Me and Bobby McGee for the
first time played by Canadian singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. He
(09:18):
knew exactly who the song was meant for. He closed
his eyes and he could picture Janis Joplin singing. Teach
me that song, man, new Worth insisted, and Gordon played
it again real slow. Knworth grabbed the pencil and paper.
He wrote it down fast, learned it quick and then
did his own impression of a helicopter landing on Janis
Joplin's front steps to deliver something that she just had
(09:42):
to hear. Jaeder Hoover's desk was all memos, an ecosystem
(10:17):
of memos, piles of paper on high ranking officials stacked
high next to piles of paper on low ranking degenerates.
Reports for the director's eyes only, reports on good guys
breaking bad and bad guys getting worse. Recommendations on who
should be watched like a hawk and who could be
left alone to mind their own damn business. Who was
seventy j Edgar Hoover was seventy five years old. He'd
(10:40):
seen it all for nearly half a century, and in
the service of seven U S presidents. As Director the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jaedger Hoover had a memo on
every subversive, every comic sympathizer, every fascist organizer, every civil
rights empathizer. No memo was unimportant, no threat to the
United States was too small. And the coffee maker on
(11:01):
the table near the desk in his office gurgled and
spat steep and that universal sound that meant that the
Java was nearly finished with its orderly perk in warm
caffe Nation was nine. Hoover inhaled the smell of the
light rose and picked up a memo that lay on
top of a short stack of papers in the corner
of his desk, urgent teletype. It read, at the top
possible Violence Ravinia Park Concert, Highland Park, Illinois, August nine.
(11:27):
This wasn't the first confidential rock and roll memo he'd read,
and it wouldn't be the last. In fact, memos on
rock stars had become increasingly commonplace in Hoover's world. Rock
and roll was proving itself to be a very clear
and very present danger to decency and good morals. In
the fifties, the memos were about the various death threats
and extortion attempts on Elvis Presley. In the sixties, the
(11:50):
memos were about the Kingsman's filthy song Louis Louis, which
Hoover new was a piece of trash, even if their
investigation hadn't conclusively proved it was a piece of trash
and now is. The sixties became the seventies. With Richard
Nixon at the Holm, the memos were on the rock
and roll subversives in street fighting types, Jimmy Hendricks, Jim Morrison,
(12:10):
Janice Joplin. Hoover read on reliable source advised that rock
concert is to be held at Ravinia Park beginning approximately
a PM, featuring rock singer Janis Joplin. Source crowd estimated
to be in neighborhood of twenty persons. Hoover walked over
to the coffeemaker, pulled the caraffe from the drip, and
started to pour himself a director sized couple of joe.
(12:32):
He kept one eye on the poor and one eye
on the memo he kept reading. Source further advises on
confirmed reports have been received I possible attempts to disrupt
concert and cause violence an area by unknown persons, possibly
by some of those involved in disruption of Chicago Grant
Park concert July. Source further advised that Ravinia Park area
was to be heavily patrolled by some two hundred police
(12:54):
officers from nearby communities. God damn Grant Park, Hoover thought
to himself as he blew on the hot liquid and
attempted to take a first sip that wouldn't burn his lips.
To hell Grant Park and then a ship show It
was pitched as a free show by Sly and the
family Stone and you better believe the Bureau had some
memos on that bunch of Left Coast ship show starters.
(13:17):
The free show was both an apology and a peace
offering to Chicago after Slide bailed on playing some shows
in town, and not just bailing, but bailing after making
audiences wait for hours. But at Grand Park, Chicago was
still pisted it Sly when he showed up, only to
be made to wait again. The crowd grew throughout the day,
and so did the temperature. Soon the crowd was around
(13:38):
fifty strong and the mercury was topping out at ninety something.
Rumors started to spread throughout the audience that Sly was
standing them up once more when Chicago was tired of
waiting again. That's when the rocks started flying in the
bottles whatever people can get their hands on, mud, cloth, sticks, stones,
The thrones of cops on hand that day took the
burnt of the hurl projectiles, bottle us to the face,
(14:00):
rocks to the balls. They picked up their attackers, weapons
and retaliating. Cops jumped kids, kids jump cops, storefront windows busted,
shots fired, into the air to scare the mob into submission.
They only made the mob go harder. Hundreds of people,
including Chicago police officers, were injured. Thirty cops run into
the hospital. That day. Hoover sat down at his desk
(14:21):
and read over the Ravinia Park memo again. His coffee
cups started to make its inevitable staying on another stack
of memos nearby. As shitty as Grant Park was, this
Janice Joplin show had the potential to be even worse.
Jaeger Hoover didn't like Janice Choplin. She was a loose
lipped hippie succubiss with a voice like a strangled cat
(14:42):
and heat. But worse, she was a troublemaker, a rabble rouser.
She hailed from San Francisco, the land of rabble rousers.
She was a drunk, She was loud, she had a
filthy mouth. She wasn't a lady. She was too masculine
for Jaeger Hoover, not masculine enough. But that's a whole
other story. Who knew that Janis Joplin had a long
history of disturbing the piece. The first memo on Janis
(15:04):
Joplin that Hoover remembered seeing was when she was a
student at the University of Texas at Austin, living with
that group of commie and civil rights synthazers at the Ghetto,
and then her first group, Big Brother in the Holding Company,
were nearly arrested for disturbing the piece at the Matrix
in San Francisco. Worst of all, however, was her show
at the Curtis Hickson Holland Tampa, Florida. This was the
(15:25):
year before ninety nine, just a few months after Jim
Morrison un zipped his pants to let his crawling kingsnake
out while on stage in Miami. What the hell is
it about Florida, Hoover thought, as he took another gentle
sip of his steaming hot coffee. Janiss new band, the
one assembled by Skip pro Cop was calling themselves the
(15:46):
Cosmic Blues Band and touring behind a new record. I
got them old Cosmic Blues again, Mama. But Skip was
out of the picture, having jumped Ship when Janice wouldn't
give Sam Andrew the boot, who followed her from Big Brother.
Skip didn't think Sam was good enough, so Skip was
out and Sam was in, as was Bill King On keyboards,
John Till on guitar, Brad Campbell on bass, and Mary
(16:08):
Baker on drums, along with the horn section. At least
at that particular moment, if Big Brother had maintained a
steady lineup of players and the Cosmic Blues Band was
practically a revolving door of musicians, it was unsteady. And
the unsteadiness was in full display on that November night
in Tampa at the Curtis Hixon Hall. So was Janice's
infamous rabble rousing temper, the one that Hoover count on
(16:31):
like a well maintained wristwatch. But when she started the
slow simmer of summertime, the crowd of nearly thirty people
bum rushed the stage. They pressed their bodies closer to
here every nuance in her voice. They stood on chairs
to see every move she made with the microphone clenched
tightly in her fist. And the cops on duty saw
the crowd's behavior as the early warning sign of an
(16:53):
impending riot, the same kind of thing that cops had
seen at the door show in Miami and the door
show at the Singer Bowl and Queen's. The cops didn't
wait to spring into action. They yanked people down off
their chairs. They grabbed kids standing in the aisles by
the shoulders and pushed them towards their seats. One officer
even at a bullhorn and was screaming with an inches
of petrified kids faces nuts when Janice lost him. Don't
(17:16):
funk with those people, She yelled into her microphone, yelling
as loud as she could so that she could be
heard over the bullhorns, and nasily why the bullhorn became
a weapon? The cop waved at her heads and faces,
his free hand firmly caressing his billy club. He just
wanted someone to give him a reason to use it,
and Janice was happy to be that someone. Hey, Mr
(17:37):
Janice yelled again, this time looking the cop right in
his eyes. Why the fund are you so uptight? Man?
Did you buy a five dollar ticket to the show?
And that was all the cop needed. Just as the
GEMA had suspected for some time, obscene Janice went blue.
She cursed on stage numerous times, each time directed at
an officer of the law. Even then, they arrested her
(17:58):
in her dressing room right after the band finished their set.
She was let out of the Curtis Hixon Hall and handcuffs,
passed the thousands of kids who had pressed themselves close
to be near her, past BB King, the Chicago blues
legend who had opened the show. An hour later, Janice
posted a five four dollar bond and walked out of
the Tampa police station. She walked out wearing a fur
(18:19):
coat and a fur hat. When Jaeger Hoover read about
Janice Joplin's Tampa arrest in ninety nine, that was the
detail that pissed him off the most. The fur coat
in the fur hat, walking out of the police station
like she was victorious. It's like she was anything but
what Hoover knew her to be. A subversive, a rabble rouser,
(18:42):
a threat to the decency and good morals of the
American people. Jack or Hoover would keep his eye on her,
and the FBI would maintain a file on her, and
they've keep their nerves caffeiniated in their teletypes urgent, and
they would get her. They'd get to Janice Joplin by
getting to someone close to her first. We'll be right
(19:03):
back after this. We were the g mens staking out
Bill King's parents place, were waiting for him. When he arrived.
They sat in sedans had idled in the darkness. The
air outside was cold, and the wind kicked up, and
the hemlock trees creaked Indiana. December, the twenty two year
(19:28):
old had traveled home for the holidays. High off his
new role as Janice Joplin's keyboardist and musical director. He
had no idea that someone would step out of an
idolnk sedan, toss a half smoked marlbro to the frigid
asphalt and stopped him from ever reaching his parents front door.
Just days before, the Cosmic Blues Band had been guests
of honor at Stax Records this holiday show in Memphis.
(19:50):
One of Janie's idols, Otis Redding, had been dead a year,
but Stax Otis's record label soldiered on. The homegrown town
on display was on denied have a book of Tea
in the MG's Carlo and Rufus, Thomas, Johnny Taylor, Eddie
Floyd in the shadow of Otis loom large, as did
the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr. Who had been
shot dead only eight months earlier at the Lorraine Motel,
(20:13):
the same hotel where Bill Janis and the band were
staying while they were in town. The band had gone
through many personnel changes, but they were finding their footing,
and Bill was hopeful that a stern role on the
Stack Show with the high octane R and B icons
that Janice love, would help raise their game. It appealed
to the shadow of Otis writing to guide them, but
the Shadow of Otis wasn't in a guiding kind of mood.
(20:37):
Despite her newfound popularity, Janis Joplin was still an acolyte
in the hallowed Temple of Soul. The mostly black audience
saw the Cosmic blues band as a xerox of the
real thing. Janice was either brave or stupid to follow
Eddie Floyd to open with a cover of Eddie Floyd's
song Raise Your Hand. Then Janis sang the bgs to
(20:58):
love Somebody like Otis would have it searching, pleading a
raw nerve that only got raw as the band went
from soft to loud. She thought back to Oh this
is Show at the film war that she had seen
the ones she attended, high on LSD spiked Cold Duck,
and thought of how that music made her feel. She
closed her eyes, held out her hand in agony, and
(21:18):
waited for Otis's spirit to grab it and pull her higher.
She never left the ground and for the soul crowd
in Memphis, something was missing. Bill wish that they were
hiding that something and ace in their back pocket, but
no dice. And now back in Indiana at his parents
place for some spiced fruitcake and holiday cheer, Bill King
(21:39):
found something else hiding. Hiding in plain sight. Bill was
met on the sidewalk by a man in glasses with
comb black hair and a nondescript gray suit. Mr King.
The man in glass zest Bill was caught off guard,
someone says Mr. King, and Bill steps looking around for
his father, and Bill pointed out himself and cocked his
head to the side and the universal nonverbal signed for
(22:00):
Whomi Mr Bill King. The man in glasses clarified. Bill
nodded his head slowly that Mr Bill King, him and
b three organists musical director from Miss Janis Joplin. The
man in glasses confirmed that he was a fed and
he was there to add another title to Bill Kink's
growing list of superlatives. Vietnam War draft dodger. Bill King
(22:22):
was under arrest to Janice and the rest of the band.
Bill had simply disappeared. He had gone home to visit
his family for Christmas and never returned, and they had
no way to get in touch with them. Janice didn't
even know what town in Indiana he'd gone home too,
and if he had told her, it was possible that
she was too fucked up to hear him. Booze and
Smack had a hold on Janice. They gripped tight. They
(22:44):
didn't want to let go. Gabriel Meckler, the producer hired
to hom I got them all cosmic music, and Mama
knew it as soon as he heard Janice Choplin sing
in the studio that her voice was shot from all
the drinking, the drunk and the smoking the late nights
in the later mornings. Here they were supposedly making janiss
big solo debut after her Big Brother departure, and her
(23:04):
voice was shit. If Janis didn't make some sweeping changes,
her voice wouldn't be the only thing that would be lost.
She could be lost as quickly as Nancy Gurley was lost. Nancy,
the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, didn't know
the fix would be your last. In July sixty nine,
Nancy and James hopped in their Toyota jeep with their
(23:26):
three year old son, Hongo, and went camping along the
Russian River near Cloverdale, California. James packed the essentials, a tent,
sleeping bags, a canoe, and a hundred dollar baggy of heroin.
They spent the day on the river. They voted, they swam,
they fished. That night, James walked to the Toyota for
a different catch. He fished the heroin baggy out of
(23:49):
the glove box. He had been drinking wine all night,
so when he shot up, he missed his own vein.
Nancy watched as James pulled the needle from his arm.
She spoke up. She'd been trying quit dope again, but
as she watched, her husband methodically pressed the syringe into
his body. She fancied her own head out in the
middle of the California wilderness, so James shot her up.
(24:11):
This time he didn't miss. Minutes later, Nancy took her
last breath. She was thirty years old. James was charged
with second degree murder for giving his wife the deadly dose.
When Janie learned of Nancy's death, she frantically searched for
her own stash or junk brang up Sam Andrew, and
the two got as high as they could. Janis and
(24:33):
Sam got high again in the hotel suite after a
sold out show at the Royal Albert Hall in London,
only this time it was too much for Sam. When
Janice realized that he wasn't breathing, she knew something was
horribly wrong. She could feel her heart beat in her ears.
Her heart thudded in her ears. Burned, she ran into
the bathroom and turned the bathtub fasten on as cold
(24:54):
as it would go. She felt the rhythm in her
ears connect to the rhythm in her chest, now a
sensation like something was going to pound straight through her body.
She ran back into the sweet's main room and stripped Sam, naked,
every limb, slack and going cold. Someone else was in
the room now. Janice's vision was blurred from the throbbing
in her ears and in her chest. She couldn't make
(25:15):
out a face, but she gestured wildly that she needed help,
and the two of them carried Sam into the bathroom
and dropped him into the cold water. Minutes later, Sam
snapped back to life. Janice would feel the heartbeat in
her ears again. Months later, when after a show on
winter Land in San Francisco, the hits she gave herself
proved to be too much. She felt that as soon
(25:36):
as she pushed the plunger towards her arm and the
pounding continued, she shut her eyes and saw the man
from her dreams, the one on the gold Harley with
the orange flames, and then she was out. Her friends
found her in her room, unconscious, her skin cold and blue.
They were able to revive her, just like she had
revived Sam, and this time she was luckier than Nancy Girly.
(25:59):
This time she hadn't completely disappeared. Nancy Gurley had disappeared.
Bill King had disappeared, and where the fuck was Bill King?
In fact, it was Bill King's father, a World War
Two vette who landed at Normandy, who helped broker a
deal with the Feds on that December evening, when Bill
returned home for the holidays. If Bill would agree to
(26:22):
join the army, then he could avoid jail time for
his egregious draft dodging, and so he did. And then
as a grunt in basic training, Bill watched the Ed
Sullivan Show from his barracks, only to see Janis Joplin
and the Boys performing Eddie Floyd to Raise Your Hand,
the cover version that he had arranged prior to his
FBI intervention, Bill was Crestfallen. Months later, on the night
(26:45):
before he was to be shipped off to Vietnam, Bill
went a wall. He stood out in the side of
some backstreet, stuck his thumb into the air, and hitched
all the way to Canada. Word got back to Janison
the bed Bill King was starting over. It was becoming
clear every day that he wasn't the only one who
would need to put out a disguise and become a
different person. Bob knew Earth was in the middle of
(27:31):
telling Brad Campbell that his name was no longer Brad Campbell.
As he was speaking, Knworth ran a dark brown eyebrow
pencil along the hairs of Campbell's blonde mustache. It was
going to take a minute, he warned Campbell. This was
a lot of mustache, a lot of blonde, and yes,
this eyebrow pencil was really the only thing they had
that would get the job done. K new Worth traced
(27:53):
the pencil along more blonde hairs, quick downward strokes from
Campbell's nose to his lips. Sometimes a clusters would require
more than a single pass. Like new Worth had said,
it was a lot of mustache. Now tell me again
what your name is, new Worth ask Campbell. Campbell, bass
player for Janis Joplin's Cosmic Blues Band, clenched his eyes
shut and twisted up his face like he was running
(28:15):
through filing cabinets inside his head. Then he opened his eyes.
Keith Cherry, he responded, good, Neworth said, and continued to
darken Campbell's blonde mustache. And where are you from? Campbell,
a Canadian since the day he was born, didn't have
to think about that answer. The United States, he answered.
New Worth nodded his head and approval. That's right, that's good.
(28:36):
That's very good, Keith Cherry from the United States, new
Worth said, and placed his hand on Campbell's chin to
turn his head this way and that and expect his
final pencil strokes. Now it's time to do your sideburns.
Word of Bill King's FBI Bust had made its way
back to Janis and the Cosmic Blues Band. The band's
bass player, Brad Campbell, had a recently expired visa, and
(28:58):
the band had a big show in New York City,
that they couldn't miss. Their collective paranoia was off the charts.
What if the FEDS were targeting the whole band? What
if Bill King was just the first to go down
and the rest of them were just sitting ducks waiting
unknowingly to fall like ponds and Jay ger Hoover's diabolical game.
The easiest target surely would be Brad Campbell and his
(29:19):
expired visa. They wouldn't arrest Campbell, but they sure ships
send him packing back to the Great White North. Janice
couldn't handle losing two players in such quick succession, not
with things going the way things were going. So they
need to disguise Campbell. New look, new name, knew everything.
Enter Bob new Worth, rock and roll fixer. There was
(29:40):
a reason why Neworth made the rounds, why it was
found everywhere rock and roll was found blossoming in the
nineteen sixties. New Worth could see into people. He could
see what made them tick, what got them going, get
them ryle cut them off. He saw what was happening
in Cambridge, in Nashville, in Austin, in New York. He
saw what was happening at Newport, at Monterey, at stock.
(30:00):
New Worth decided he was happy with Campbell's formerly blonde
mutton chops. He told the bass player to put on
a pair of dark sunglasses and then strategically placed Janiss
for hat on top of his head, with his tongue
unconsciously mashed between his teeth. Knworth adjusted the hat just
so and said, out of the side of his mouth,
if you wear the mask long enough, sooner or later
(30:21):
you become the mask. Campbell figured, k new Earth was
just talking about the quick and dirty disguise job on
his face, but new Worth was really thinking about Janice,
thinking about how, at some point in her quest for
liberation from her past, and from her hometown and from
buzz harshing squares in general, she had gotten lost, lost
in the toughest nail stage persona which wasn't really her
(30:43):
lost in heroin addiction, which had replaced the one time
meth addiction that she swore she wouldn't repeat. The least
he could do, new Worth figured was to put Janice
at ease about the basis with the expired visa thing
and then as a cherry on top of the Keith
Cherry disguise share of the song that Gordon Lightfoot had
shown him. It was like it was written for her.
(31:05):
Nworth looked into Janice's eyes as you played the song
for me and Bobby McGee and saw that she recognized
it too. She'd never heard it before, but she recognized it.
The new Wis impact on Janice wouldn't end there. He
would show up again at a crucial crossroads in Janice's life,
only this time he'd have someone else in town. He'd
(31:25):
bring Chris Christofferson to Janice's doorstep, and Janice would feel
as though she had known Chris her whole life. I'm
Jake Brennan, and this is the twenty seven Club, all right.
(31:50):
This episode of The seven Club is brought to you
by disgrace Land, the award winning music and true crime
podcast that I also host. Disgrace Land is available only
on the free Amazon Music game. To hear tons of
insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away with murder
and behaving very badly. Nirvana, Prince, Jerry Lee Lewis, The
Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Cardi Bate, and many many more.
(32:11):
Go to Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land, or if
you have an Echo device, just say hey Alexa play
the Disgrace Land podcast. The twenty seven Club is hosted
and co written by me Jake Brennan. Zeth Landi is
the lead writer and co producer. Matt Boden mixes the show.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Lenetta.
(32:31):
The twenty seven Club is produced by myself for Double
Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this
episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
twenty seven Club series page. Our previous seasons on Jimmy
Hendrix and Jim Morrison are available for you to binge
right now wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're
like we here, please be sure to find and follow
the twenty seven Club on the I Heart Radio app,
(32:53):
Apple podcast or wherever you get shows. And if you'd
like to win a free twenty seven Club poster designed
by the man himself of Nate Gonzalez, then leave a
review for twenty seven Club on Apple Podcasts or hashtag
subscribe to seven Club on social media and we'll pick
two winners each week and announce them on the Double
Elevis Instagram page that's at Double Elvis. Give that a fall,
(33:15):
so get out there and spread the word about the
twenty seven Club. You can talk to me per usual
on Instagram and Twitter, at disgrace Land, pod Rock Rolla.
What's up for your is
Host
Jake Brennan
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.