Rock singer Janis Joplin’s meteoric rise and fall in the late ’60s is memorable to all who listened to that gravelly voice wring emotion out of songs that have become emblematic of an era of rebellion, social upheaval and personal abandon.

The Summer of Love was already in full swing when the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival starring headliners like The Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas and the Papas, and Otis Redding drew record-breaking crowds to the Monterey County Fairgrounds for a weekend of free music. Also on the program were Jimi Hendrix and Ravi Shankar in their first American appearances to the largely white audience, which some estimated to be up to 90,000. When a petite little white blues lead singer, backed by Big Brother and the Holding Company, stepped up to the mic late in the third day, the audience knew they had heard someone special. Janis Joplin from Port Arthur, Texas, wearing what became her signature Haight-Ashbury hippie couture with feathers in her hair, became the surprise performer of the concert.

"Cooke chronicles Joplin’s all-too-brief career in the first person, present tense, creating an atmosphere of being on the spot, in the crowds, on the buses and planes, and in the bedrooms."

“Up to now,” author John Byrne Cooke says, “Big Brother is just another variation on the San Francisco sound.” But, he says, “from this moment they’re Something Else... By the time she hits the first chorus of ‘Ball and Chain’ the audience is mesmerized. Can a white girl sing the blues? Janis’s answer is yes.” Mama Cass, sitting in the VIP section of the audience reserved for performers, is heard to have said, “Wow. Wow! That’s really heavy.”

Cooke, the son of British journalist Alistair Cooke, was covering the festival ostensibly to gather film for a documentary. He had sat in with bands for a few years, playing guitar backup and solos, so he knew many of the big timers personally. But he had never seen anything like this brazen hippie who could break your heart with her blues. He had been considering road managing a band, and when he saw what Joplin and her boys could do, he set about talking them into hiring him for the job. He would go on to remain through two band changes, from Big Brother to The Kozmic Blues Band and, finally, to The Full Tilt Boogie Band. He saw her through broken romances, hangovers, the highs of fame, drugs and the ever-present bottle of bourbon, and then the crashes. Like so many before and after her massive stardom, she flared bright and went down burning.

Cooke chronicles Joplin’s all-too-brief career in the first person, present tense, creating an atmosphere of being on the spot, in the crowds, on the buses and planes, and in the bedrooms. He was there for her as a friend and manager, occasional lover and always-stalwart supporter from the beginning to the tragic end. He counted the house and the money, paid the band and promoters, wrangled with the New York-based management and faced the press. He herded the band members across America, to Europe and on the uproarious train ride from Toronto to Calgary. His job was to see that they were fed, paid and showed up on time. 

The last tour, an uproarious train ride from Toronto to Calgary with several bands, included the lesser known songwriter Kris Kristofferson as they rode the bar car from one end of Canada to the other. It would be one of Kristofferson’s songs, recorded by several other artists, that would become Joplin’s most memorable hit. “Me & Bobby McGee”would appear on her final album, Pearl, released after her death. 

The tired old joke “If you remember the ’60s, you weren’t really there” is not true in Cooke’s case. He was there, and remembers them well for all of us who might have missed a few beats.