You know I have a history of worshipping strong!, tough!, showbiz! women. But I haven’t told you about my long-running sub-penchant for troubled lady blues singers. I used to see myself (1970- ) in the spiritual lineage of Bessie Smith (1892-1937) and Janis Joplin (1942-1970).

I liked Janis first, after seeing the videotape of her going back to her 10-year high-school reunion and laughing at everyone. Then she recommended Bessie to me, through her published words of praise. Twenty-five years apart, Janis and I both checked Bessie Smith LPs out of the library and listened to them on the bedroom floor at home. Bessie influenced Janis musically and look-wise (Bessie gave Janis the vaudevillian habit of using feather boas and floor-length necklaces onstage)… and they both influenced me culturally, I guess you could say. I wanted to be both of them.

I know. You might be thinking, This story is already too faggy for me. You say that you’re leaving / And that you’re going away / But before you leave, dear / Please let me have my say.

Being bluesy is a choice. It’s about being a romantic, and I was always a romantic. Feeling sorry for yourself is very important to the lifestyle, as is substance abuse. And of course, being hard-done-by in matters of the heart. I worked hard both the night and day / I even let him draw my pay / He packed his grip and left on Christmas Day / Oh, well, I guess he’s gone.

Bessie’s lyrics are so special, they rewarded the hard work it took to understand them through the poor recording quality and her thick Southern accent shot through with 1920s slang to boot. My friends bought me the CD box sets as presents. I listened to all of her songs hundreds of times. I have them all memorized, and to this day I can sing along to all of them.

I cried last night / And I cried the’all night before / Like a fool / But I swear that I ain’t gonna cry no mo’ / If he can stand to leave me, I can stand to see him go. I once thought I would like to become a blues singer, and I would re-record all of Bessie’s songs without changing the gender of the lyrics’ subjects. Wouldn’t that have been a kick? There were no Rufus Wainwrights or anyone like that back then. I should have done it, I would’ve been the first white male black female blues singer. But I didn’t have the courage to come out as Bessie Smith and Janis Joplin reincarnated.

Once read a story about how Janis was going to be interviewed on 60 Minutes and she had been given the advice, from a fellow musician, that if she didn’t like a question she should just say “fuck” and then they wouldn’t be able to use the footage. Mike Wallace’s first question was “So, can a white girl really sing the blues?” And Janis answered, “Fuck!”

In the book Piece of My Heart, music journalist David Dalton has a disturbing report about something else Joplin said.

She is in a bar, her favorite place to be, talking to a drunk guy (“North Beach”) about blues singers of the past. She says, “People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable.” North Beach: “They like their blues singers miserable and drunk.” Janis: “They like their blues singers to die afterwards.” Then she explains how she can’t worry about things like “cholesterol or cirrhosis or some other dumb, unaware trip” because “…if I start saving up bits and pieces of me like that, man, there ain’t gonna be nothing left for Janis.”

I went around for a time reading that passage to all of my friends individually, and made them agree with me that it was the creepiest thing.

Both Bessie and Janis died of accidents caused by men. Joplin bought heroin from a male dealer the day she died, and it was too pure. Lots of people don’t know this, but you don’t “overdose” from heroin: It’s the strength, not the amount, that causes people to die. Everyone who bought bags from that dealer that night in Los Angeles died, Janis was just the only famous one.

Legend has it that before she left the bar to go back to her hotel room alone that last night of her life, Janis went around the room and made each of her bandmates tell her individually that they loved her.

Bessie was sleeping in the passenger seat of a car driven by her boyfriend/manager, on a country road at night, when he accidentally slammed into the back of a truck parked on the side of the road. Her right arm had been hanging out the window, and it was severed. Additionally she had what are called “side-swipe injuries” consisting of crushed ribs, etc. She was DOA when they finally got her to the hospital.

I’m going down to the cemetery / ’Cause the world is all wrong. Janis’s ashes were scattered by plane over the Marin Coast in Northern California. She also bequeathed several thousand dollars in her will for her friends to have a party instead of a funeral.

Even though 10,000 people went to her funeral in Philadelphia, Bessie lay for 33 years in an unmarked grave in Sharon Hill, Penna. Her no-account first husband stole the money — more than once! — that had been raised for a headstone.

Columbia Records, label to both Smith and Joplin, provided the self-serving epitaph: "The greatest blues singer in the world will never stop singing." They could have added "on Columbia Records!" but didn't.

A couple of months before she died, Janis split the cost of a gravestone for Bessie with another woman who had been Bessie’s housekeeper.

On this Memorial Day, remember that you can honor someone who meant a lot to you by buying them a headstone if they don’t have one. It’s good for the soul to think about somebody else for a change. Blows the blues away, temporarily anyway.

I visited Bessie’s grave exactly 15 years ago today, and I wrote about it that day. I’m sure I have a copy of that story somewhere in a box, but I can’t be bothered to find it because it wasn’t very good. I wrote it “on spec”… for myself. It was the first thing I ever wrote like that. Like this, I mean.

Tags: 60 Minutes, Bessie Smith, Columbia Records, David Dalton, heroin, Janis Joplin, Marin County California, Mike Wallace, Rufus Wainwright, Sharon Hill Pennsylvania