Today marks the 40ieth anniversary of bluesman Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson’s suicide in Topanga Canyon, California, on Bob Hite’s property. Blind Owl is an oft-forgotten member of the fabled 27 Club and his death marked the first of three 27s over the course of the fall of 1970; Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were to follow.

Alan Wilson grew up in a Boston suburb and studied music at Boston University. From an early age he was, using a contemporary label, an ardent conservationist and environmentalist. Out of all the musicians who played Monterey in ’67 or Woodstock in ’69, Wilson truly held nature sacred, both in actions and in words. Canned Heat’s Future Blues record included a short plead in the gate-fold where Alan Wilson urged people to save his beloved California Redwoods from extinction. At the time, logging posed a huge threat to the last swaths of these primeval, majestic forests.

Instead of sleeping in hotels while on tour, Blind Owl preferred to roll out his sleeping bag in nearby fields and spend the early morning hours collecting samples that he’d stuff in a huge botany book that he liked to travel with.

When it came to playing music, Blind Owl’s chops on the harmonica and guitar, be it acoustic, electric or slide, was in a sense unrivaled. He possessed an in-depth knowledge of all forms of the blues and a true blues scholar. During the Hooker N Heat sessions, which took place shortly before his death, he proved seasoned enough to follow John Lee Hooker’s odd beats every step of the way. You can hear Hooker mutter in amazement that the pale, bespectacled kid always seemed to know where the old master was going. “You musta been listenin’ to my records all your life!” Hooker says. But Hooker was just one of many masters whose style Alan Wilson knew intimately. Six years earlier, in 1964, Wilson taught Son House, who had long retired from music, to play the songs House had recorded back in the 1930s.

While Alan Wilson’s chops were top-notch, he suffered with severe and chronic mental illness. His bandmates in Canned Heat provided support, but probably not the kind of stability someone like Wilson needed. He had already attempted suicide a couple of times before he did himself in with a handful of reds and a bottle of gin.

During the research for The 27s–The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll, manager and friend Skip Taylor told us that when he discovered Alan’s body, the musician finally looked peaceful and happy.

Wilson’s songs and music live on through “On the Road Again” and “Up In the Country,” but his talent covers obviously much more than the famous hits. Seek out his work with John Fahey, the aforementioned Son House and John Lee Hooker, as well as “Five Owls” and “Raga Kafi” from Living the Blues‘s trippy “Parthenogenesis.” Yup, that’s Wilson on the hypnotic sitar.

Skip Taylor is currently shopping around a “solo” record that features released and unreleased Alan Wilson material with and without Canned Heat. We’re not holding our breath for this one, but hope it’ll be released sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Be sure to listen to the Stephen Stills clip below where he dedicates “Blues Man” to our tragic guitar hero.

“You can run, you can run, tell my friend boy Willie Brown”
With those words, rock’s grandfather and 27s archetype Robert Johnson immortalized bluesman Willie Brown in his prophetic “Cross Road Blues.” Cream (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce), of course, brought the song into the rock canon with their version of the song.

While Willie Brown’s name is immortalized, his earthly remains rest in an unmarked grave in Tunica County, Mississippi. A group of blue fans, scholars, and musicians are in the process of raising $2,100 to get him a proper headstone at the Good Shepherd Church in Tunica. The Willie Brown Blues Benefit takes place September 26, 2010, in Tampa, Florida, and donations are collected there and through Paypal. Reminds us of Janis Joplin and the effort she was a part of with Juanita Green, which resulted in a permanent resting place for blues great Bessie Smith.

We commend Jason Rewald and the other fine folks at tdblues.com for this great cause and for their fantastic research, digging up census records, death certificates, and writing about Robert Johnson’s guitars, tunings, and much more. Keep it up!

National Public Radio dubbed Janis Joplin “the Queen of Rock” on a segment that aired this morning. Instead of the typical “best of” (read: “most famous”) track selections, the producers included a live version of “Women Is Losers” from a 1966 performance at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom. “Ball and Chain” from Monterey Pop followed and it was rounded out by the famous “Me and Bobby McGee.” They did not credit Kris Kristofferson with the song, which is too bad, as many people erroneously believe was written by the Queen of Rock. For more Janis Joplin on NPR, be sure to listen to the interview about The 27s from 2009.

There is little doubt that Janis Joplin’s iconic voice and wild lifestyle in the midst of the counter cultural sixties opened up the playing field to female rock stars, but although there have been countless famous singer-songwriters in the Joni Mitchell-vein and divas such as Madonna, not nearly enough larger-than-life Queen-bee rock personalities have emerged. Courtney Love and Amy Winehouse stand out like an open bottle of Jack at Sunday mass of course. Who else?

A couple of years ago Tin Alley drummer Peter Hofbauer hit a kangaroo (yea, they’re an Australian band) while riding his motorcycle. He nearly died the same way Echo & the Bunnymen’s Pete de Freitas did, but three weeks in intensive care put him back on track to recovery. Hofbauer was 27 years old at the time.

Tin Alley’s latest single, “Out of Control,” spawned from the drummer’s near-death experience at 27. In an interview with Oz Music Scene, singer and guitarist Jim Siourthas provided some background context to the song.

“So we were just playing with the idea of dying at the age of 27, and doing a bit of a search on the internet we found out that there was a club called the 27 Club. So that’s basically what “Out of Control” talks about. The idea was spawned out of Peter’s accident, but it actually talks about Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and other members of the 27 Club, and what their lives would have been like, and the reason why they died, and so on. So that’s what the song deals with lyrically.”

Speaking of the words, the trio allowed themselves to paraphrase Neil Young’s line (and that Kurt Cobain later included in his suicide note) by singing “Best to burn our bright than to fade into the night.”

In mid-November, 2009, “Out of Control” reached #1 on the Big Pond rock charts where the single (and EP) is for sale. At the time of writing, you can listen to the track on the band’s myspace page. It’s a catchy rocker in the same vein that the Foo Fighters mine, which explains the radio play it’s garnered in Oz. Also available on iTunes.

Ronald “Pigpen” McKernan

Born: September 8, 1945 in San Bruno, California
Died: March 8, 1973 in Corte Madera, California
Bands: Grateful Dead, The Warlocks, Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions

Pigpen was the only showman of the Grateful Dead, a hard drinkin’ bluesman whose improvised blues raps equaled Jerry Garcia’s electric hillbilly guitar licks. Pig was an integral part of the Dead’s early incarnations. Ron McKernan selected cover songs, wrote words, music, and played piano, organ, harmonica, and sang.

Unlike the rest of the Dead, Pig wasn’t down with LSD, but he was reportedly dosed on two occasions. In 1966, he had a summer fling with Janis Joplin and introduced her to Southern Comfort, which soon became her signature booze of choice. As the Grateful Dead’s long, strange trip continued with psychedelic jams, Pig, who was more of a blues and rocker, was sidelined. Years of hard boozing soon took its toll and after a long period of illness Pigpen’s liver gave out in 1973. His epitaph reads “Pigpen was and is now forever one of the Grateful Dead.”

Janis Joplin (“Pearl”)

Born: January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas
Died: October 4, 1970, in a Los Angeles hotel room
Bands: Big Brother and The Holding Company, The Kozmic Blues Band, The Full Tilt Boogie Band

After a miserable childhood as Port Arthur’s “freak,” “creep,” and “pig” she went to found a crew of like-minded people in Austin’s University district. Janis sang vocal jazz, blues, country, folk, and bluegrass. In 1963, she left for the West Coast and spent time as a bohemian in North Beach. She moved up the coast and connected with the thriving folk scene that spread across several coffee houses. She recorded several demos accompanied by Jorma Kaukonen (later of The Jefferson Airplane), but got caught up in the speed scene, left town for NYC, came back, and was urged stock, The Band, Buddy Guy, The Dooto dry up at home. Back in Port Arthur she shed her wild life style and cultivated a slow domestic life style. In San Francisco, Chet Helms, who knew Joplin from Austin, managed a new psychedelic band called The Holding Company, and he thought she would be perfect for the gig. He sent mutual friend who convinced Janis is was time to return.

With Janis Joplin on board with The Big Brother and The Holding Company it didn’t take long before the band was known for raw-energy live shows. During the summer of ’66 the group moved next to the Grateful Dead; Janis and Pigpen soon had a little summer fling going. Big Brother’s major breakthrough occurred the following summer at the Monterey Pop Festival, which was appeared in D. A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop film. Big Brother and The Holding Company’s eponymous debut followed a few weeks later. The media loved the Janis’ raw vocals and wild demeanor, both on and off stage, but the rest of the group wasn’t equally excited about her commanding place in the spotlight.

Janis Joplin came from Port Arthur, Texas, via Austin, to San Francisco.

Cheap Thrills followed in early ’68 and its single, “Piece of My Heart,” rose to the top of the Billboard chart. The continued to tour and Janis sunk deeper into her cravings for heroin. Columbia Records declined her suggested name for the album, yet it pretty much summed up where she was at: Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills. Tensions mounted and Janis Joplin left Big Brother at the end of 1968, ready for her “own” band. Joplin sought help to assemble the Kozmic Blues Band in early 1969 and they soon recorded I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! The Kozmic Blues Band backed her up later that year at the fabled Woodstock festival, but critics urged her to disband, which she did only a year after its inception. Janis Joplin was much more involved in selecting her final band, which she named the Full Tilt Boogie Band. “It’s my band,” she raved to a journalist. “Finally it’s my band.” Joplin weaned herself off heroin, but filled the void with even heavier drinking.

During the 4th of July week in 1970, Janis and Full Tilt rode and performed on the Festival Express tour through Canada (other acts included Grateful Dead, Flying Burrito Brothers, The Band, Buddy Guy). She was drunk, but seemed happy. Unfortunately it didn’t last long. Over the course of that summer, Joplin was back on the needle.

In September 1970, she and the band started recording Pearl in Los Angeles with Paul Rothchild (who had previously produced The Doors). Janis Joplin sadly died of an overdose of heroin during the recordings on October 4, 1970. She was 27 years old and was scheduled to add vocals to “Buried Alive In The Blues” the following day.

JanisJoplin.net