Janis Joplin
A blues singer with some of the most powerful and affecting pipes rock and roll has ever seen, Janis Joplin was a key member of the pop counter-culture in the late ‘60s. Half self-conscious and painfully shy, half firebrand party monster, Joplin’s excesses caught up with her when she died of a heroin overdose on Oct. 4, 1970. She was 27.